In COLI, we spend some time each week trying out new things, or testing emerging technologies that we suspect might be useful to faculty, staff, and students at Canisius College. Recently we’ve been looking at Explain Everything, a mobile app that does a bunch of different things. Many mobile apps tend to be feature-limited, or even gimmicks but Explain Everything has an astonishing array of tools that, working in tandem, can do all sorts of things useful for course work.
At it’s heart, EE is a whiteboard app with an infinitely zoomable or resizeable virtual surface. Drawing tools, and the ability to import images, documents, or even video make it ideal for classroom presentations. Like PowerPoint or Prezi it has slides, so all sorts of action can take place on multiple “pages.” The resulting pages–with images, video clips, text, and drawings–can be exported as .pdf files. EE includes a screen-recorder, so all that was done on a slide or page can be recorded as a video, with sound added from the mobile device’s microphone. With a simple video editor that allows clipping, animations are possible.
As a cutting edge technology Explain Everything has a few quirks, but is quite easy to use and very reliable. It isn’t free, but it’s not expensive, either. A few dollars, in a one-time fee, gets you the “classic” app, which allows whiteboarding and video recording. A few more bucks in a yearly subscription gives you the ability to collaborate with others on an EE project in real-time, and host your project in their Discover space on the web.
Check out Explain Everything’s Website to learn more about apps, features, and pricing options, including a free trial. Later this semester, COLI offers an on-campus workshop to where Canisius Faculty and Staff can try out Explain Everything on their own mobile devices. Register for this and other COLI workshops today!