ShowMe Text Features (30 Days of Creativity, Day 27)

So a few weeks ago, I got invited to beta text a nifty little iPad app called ShowMe. The developers bill it as the pathway to creating your own Khan Academy. And indeed, the functionality is deceptively simple.

Essentially, ShowMe records screencasts of you drawing on an iPad whiteboard–along with your synchronized narrative. You write or draw and you talk, and it records. Then it allows you to upload the screencasts to a social networking platform. Sort of a YouTube for mini smartboard lessons.

Here’s one I put together on “text features”–titles, headings, images, etc.–that help you understand what you’re reading. This also gets at an element of teaching this standard that I think is really important: text features don’t just help you understand what you’re reading–they’re an entry point to understanding the power of abstracting information (direct link):

Click here if the embed isn’t working: http://www.showmeapp.com/sh/?i=1986