Welcome to the iPad

Have students create introductory videos as a first use of iPads in your class

In my Organic Chemistry lab class about one third of the students have their own iPad.  Probably about half have used them in other classes leaving about half that have had little to no experience with iPads in an educational setting.  I have noticed that when students create a digital lab report in my class many of them have frustrating problems which arise.  Some of these problems are good as they cause the students to problem-solve.  This is a good skill.  But sometimes the frustration level is too high and it distracts from the real purpose of the iPad in that particular assignment.  The purpose is to utilize the technology as a tool to develop and express creativity as the students better articulate the difficult chemistry concepts they learned in a format other than purely written.  

Yesterday was the first time I took out the iPads in my Fall 2014 Organic lab.  I am starting out a little differently from previous semesters.


I am in a work group, called a "faculty inquiry group" with my colleagues.  In this group we share what we have tried with the iPads and come up with new ideas and discuss results etc.  One professor, the leader of the group, Dr. Stieber, had her students produce a quick video introducing themselves using the iPad.  They then had to upload the video to the web.  One of the biggest problems that frequently occurs has been the process of uploading screencasts.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not.  As I have posted earlier some students have lost their entire screencast in the process and had to start over!  So I decided to have my students  produce a short screencast about themselves using the Explain Everything App.  Then I had them attempt to upload it to three different places: Youtube, Google Drive, and Dropbox.  I want to share the results but first I want to share three handouts I gave them.

1) Here is the simple handout I gave them about the assignment: (You can click on any of these forms or attachments and they will enlarge for easier reading.)

2) I also have the students sign a "talent release" so that I can share their work:

3) The students also need to sign a contract for the iPads, which at this point are only used on our campus. (They don't take the iPads home.)

The Google form they fill out as they check out and check in the iPad looks like this:

This form helps me keep track of the iPads better than a paper sign in sheet which I would invariably lose.

So here is what I expected to happen.  I expected the students to take two minutes to create a two minute video.  DuH!  Wrong again!  They took an hour to make a two minute video.  This is not because the students are slow or unskilled.  This is because the students took the assignment very seriously as organic students tend to take all things very seriously.  If this had been a lower class like Chem. 110 the students would have created quick and simple videos in a shorter time.  But again, I forgot to tell my organic students this was to be a quick and simple process.  When I started to watch the videos I was really impressed, but production took a lot longer than I intended.  This takes me back to lessons I have learned in the past which is to be very clear on my expectations.  But I will take the quality work as a "consolation prize" for sure!

Once the students uploaded their video I had them go to another Google form to send me the links to their video and to comment on the process.  Here is that Google form:

As you can see, I asked the students to also upload the videos to the "Explain Everything" website. I had forgotten that Explain Everything is not like the Educreations app which lets you house your screencast on their own website.  So the students can only upload to the other three websites.

So here are the responses to some of the questions from the above form:

I have 14 students in the class.  12 responded.  Of those 8 said that Google Drive was the easiest to upload to.  Drop box and Youtube got one vote each.  All but two students sent me the link to their video on Dropbox.  All but one sent me the link to Google Drive.  Two sent me a link to Youtube.  My hunch is that they can now go home to their laptop or desktop and link from Google Drive to Youtube.  But as it stands Google Drive won out as the easiest to upload to from Explain Everything on the iPad.  There are two ways to upload the videos to Google drive.  They can upload directly from the Explain Everything app by clicking on the "upload" icon which is a box with an up arrow. Or they can save the video to the camera role on the iPad and upload the video to Google Drive from there.  I need to ask the students which way worked better.

I can't wait to watch more of the introductory videos and see how this affects the digital lab presentations during the semester.