I stumbled upon the ShowMe App completely accidentally when looking for some revision aids for students, it is a free App for Apple products and the idea behind it is that it allows you create and share resources as a narrated video, using your own drawings as a basis.

When you sign up to the App you automatically ‘follow’ a small selection of other members who have similar areas of interest. For me, this was Science and an existing member ‘Ms. Booth’ has already made nearly a hundred ‘ShowMes’ which were great to take inspiration from to get started.

However I felt the real engagement with my students would be them being able to hear my voice talking them through topics, as part of a lesson, homework, revision, or maybe in the future- as a cover lesson?  So I quickly got started creating my own. Needless to say, my first attempts at drawing on the iPad left a little to be desired but if you take a little time and use a stylus you quickly improve (even a free stylus supplied with an iPad cover made a big difference).  You can also import pictures from your iPad or the internet to use in your ShowMe.

The trickiest thing to get the hang of is drawing in ‘real time’, as everything you draw while it is recording becomes part of your ShowMe, even the mistakes. If you stop and start the recording every so often I have found it works much better as you can clear the screen between each piece of information you want to show, so the final presentation has the appearance of a running slide show.

Having used it for a few weeks now I fully recommend using an iPad in conjunction with a PC or laptop as you can only create a ShowMe using the App but you can easily manage and download your completed ShowMes as an MP4 using any computer (not just a MAC) which means you can upload them for students to use on your school VTLE, website or Twitter.

There is also the facility to have student accounts linked to your account, so students can view your ShowMes and create their own which would be great for peer teaching!

Since using it I have also been recommended to try ‘Explain Everything’, a similar App, which is my next project and for other Science teachers out there @MyGCSEScience has been making similar presentations for some time.

I just can’t wait for the day I can make my own animation to show something really specific rather than trawling the internet for hours to come up empty handed!