Apps Day

Apps Day

Onward our journey goes of digging deeper and deeper into the world of educational technology tools and apps! Let's jump right into it!

As an educator in the early elementary grades, my focus as far as ed tech tools has and continues to be on simplicity. For me, sophisticated and intricate tools are not necessary at this point. I strive to seek out the most user-friendly and quick tools. Last week I created within EdPuzzle. I loved it, it was easy, and effective. During our weekly classes for EDU 585, there have been mentions, discussions, demos, you name it, on all sorts of ed tech tools and apps. To be honest, while hearing and learning about some of them, my initial thought in the back of my mind are that while they may be awesome for older grades, they may not quite be as awesome for say K-3, which is my target. PlayPosit has come up in class a couple of times, and I recall someone mentioning how it is a good tool for younger grades. I also recall it being mentioned that it is quite similar to EdPuzzle. "Perfect!", I thought, and so I started looking into it. I jumped right into some of my fellow classmates' blogs, and immediately read how another student claimed this is a good tool to use as formative assessment, and is good for younger grades. I then read a few Common Sense reviews and appreciated how most people said this is a super user-friendly tool, and perfect as an interactive video tool. Next, after viewing two PlayPosit tutorials, I started building within it.

Now, this has been an overly busy week for me between work, traveling, endless errands, you name it. I did not leave myself much time to create a video. But ya know what? That's okay because I chose a tool that I can make an effective video in a snap! Creating within PlayPosit was very simple. It certainly resembles EdPuzzle. You can use your own videos, upload them, or even search within PlayPosit for already created videos. I chose to find a video on YouTube. One of the things with finding videos on YouTube, though, is that many times at the end of the video there are credits of sorts, links to other videos, etc. I do not need those things in my videos for the students, so one of my look-fors in these types of tools is a cropping option so I can trim the edges of the videos down to just the good stuff that I need. Thankfully, PlayPosit does have a cropping feature!

I chose to use a fun GoNoodle video of a song on the water cycle. Most of my previous videos/tools have consisted mainly of diagrams and labels of sorts. This video is basically just a rap about the water cycle with no diagrams, etc. I thought this catchy song would be a great add-on to reinforce the students' understanding of the water cycle. 

Just like in EdPuzzle, in PlayPosit you can add in interactions consisting of comments, quiz questions, audio notes, etc. While it is limited in the free version (I think it's $99 a year), it still has quite enough featured within it for exactly what I need, so free version it is! Also, you can tailor the video playback options, like if the students will be allowed to rewind the video after getting to an interaction, and can also set it so they can not skip the interactions.

All in all, for my main needs (user-friendly, quick, and effective), I rate PlayPosit a 10/10!