Using an iPad to Explain Everything
by Creating Interactive Activities and Vignettes
Tim Pelton
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
University of Victoria
Canada
tpelton@uvic.ca
Leslee Francis Pelton
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
University of Victoria
Canada
lfrancis@uvic.ca
Abstract: Explain Everything is a fantastic app that has huge potential to support students and
educators in the learning process. The Explain Everything App (and others like it) allows teachers
and students to create projects such as interactive activities that can be used by others to explore
concepts and processes. As well, through its recording functions, it also allows teachers and
students to generate and publish vignettes or video expositions of their understandings, and
demonstrate proficiency in applying such knowledge to real situations. Besides introducing the
potential of Explain Everything, this paper presents an outline of a workshop to support others in
exploring this tool in their schools and districts.
Introduction
iPads are tools that are ideally suited to support education generally and mathematics education
specifically. They offer a suite of possibilities to support individual and collaborative learning (Francis Pelton &
Pelton, 2012) including:
 access to content (textbooks, websites, blogs, wikis, etc.);
 exploration of interactive content/activities – to discover relationships, to master concepts, etc.;
 consolidation of processes – to build mastery and fluency;
 demonstration of mastery and skills - by capturing a performance;
 creation of interactive activities to share understandings; and
 creation of conceptual vignettes to support the learning of others.
A quick search of the iTunes app store will confirm that there are many thousands of apps targeted to
students and teachers. There are nearly 8000 apps with some reference to ‘math’. Although many apps might not be
recommendable, a substantial subset may have some educational value. These apps may be designed to simply
support students in consolidating mastery of a given concept or and building skills of a single mathematics process
or they may be more elaborate - providing content, exploration, and consolidation across a range of topics. Others
may support free exploration, creation, or data collection. A challenge facing educators is to determine the best use
of their iPads and to choose an appropriate set of apps to use, given such a wide range of available choices.
One of the emphases of mathematics education in recent years has been to help students build mastery of
mathematical processes (problem solving, reasoning, representation, connection making, and communication) and to
construct their own understandings of mathematical concepts (NCTM, 2000). Having students not only access
content but also generate artifacts (performance assessments) to explain their understanding of a concept is one of
the best ways to both consolidate and assess their understanding of the topic (Adu-Gyamfi, Bossé, & Faulconer,
2010; Garner, 2008). As mathematics teacher educators, we are continually searching for tools to support these goals
for 21st century learning.
Explain Everything is one example of a new type of app that has huge potential to support students and
educators in creating interactive activities and videos/animations to explain concepts to themselves and others. The
Explain Everything (EE) app allows teachers and students to create two types of educational artifacts or projects.
The first type of product that EE can create are interactive activities. They are like canned interactive whiteboard
presentations – with objects on screens that can be manipulated by students or teachers to support the exploration of
a concept. They can be shared as a project file and can be easily downloaded and opened as a project in EE on other
iPads to allow students and others to explore concepts and processes.
Through its recording functions, EE also allows teachers and students to generate and publish video
vignettes or expositions (screencasts) of their understandings, and demonstrate proficiency in applying such
knowledge to virtual and real situations (Brown-Sica, Sobel & Pan, 2009; Garner, 2008; Kearsley & Schneiderman,
1998; Wood & Ashfield, 2008). Although the term Screencasting has been used to describe the process of creating
and sharing video examples using interactive whiteboards and other related apps, it does not include the other
important functionality of the EE software – i.e., the potential to generate and share projects that support interactive
exploration (activities) and provide a foundation and resources for the subsequent student generation of screencasts
(videos). Because we want to focus on this expanded functionality we will use EE as both a specific and a generic
term until the community settles on a more neutral generic term.
In summary, EE allows us as educators to efficiently generate projects that we can turn into static content
(videos) or interactive content (activities). These EE projects provide demonstrations, exemplars and challenges to
support our classroom activities. Students, in turn, can be challenged to take these projects (i.e., interactive activities
as resources) and videos (as exemplars) and use them to explore the topic and to demonstrate their mastery and
understanding. Thus, EE supports a creative process that is an incredibly powerful learning experience - as students
explore, create, connect, articulate/communicate, visualize/represent, consolidate and question topics in mathematics
(and, indeed many other other curricular areas).
Examining the potentials of EE
Through the generous support of a CER-Net (Constructivist Education Research) grant at the University of
Victoria we have begun to examine the potentials of EE in supporting effective educational practices. As changing
educational practice begins with the teachers (Pelton & Francis Pelton, 2008; Potter & Rockinson-Szapkiw, 2012),
we began by creating workshops for teachers to help them learn to use the EE app in the mathematics classroom and
to suggest strategies to support learning. Teachers who complete the workshop are invited to partner with us to
develop mathematics activities using EE that can be shared with the wider educational community. Many of these
activities may be integrated with science, technology, social studies, environmental studies, physical education, etc.
Activities will then be introduced into elementary or middle school classes where we will examine their utility with
the target student population.
At present we are in Phase I of our study. We have developed and offered the workshop for the teachers
and have begun working with some of these teachers to develop a collection of EE activities to share with other
classroom teachers via our website. This paper will focus on the workshop for teachers with examples of EE
activities for use with students.
A Sample EE Workshop
Our workshop begins with a discussion of “Why are we here?” In this part of the workshop we have a
discussion with the teachers about why iPads might be useful in the classroom. Points that are discussed include
such things as:
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access to content (textbooks, websites, blogs, wikis, etc.)
document camera features (with an appropriate stand)
exploration of interactive content/activities – to discover relationships, to master concepts, etc.
consolidation of processes – to build mastery and fluency
demonstration of mastery and skills - by capturing a performance
creation of interactive activities to share understandings
creation of conceptual vignettes (demonstrations/videos) to support the learning of others.
This discussion is followed by an introduction to the Explain Everything app. Teachers learn that EE is like
a personalized form of interactive whiteboard and we discuss the advantages and potentials of this type of
technology. We follow this with a discussion of a common trajectory of use of EE in the classroom – first, to have
students explore some prepared activities, either as a whole class or individually; second, to generate a screencast
demonstration using a prepared project file with audio (share, flip, extend); and finally, to challenge students to
create their own EE project (activity and/or video) in the form of an explanation, demonstration, exploration, etc..
Following this introduction, we share (in static form) some examples of EE generated videos that we have
created and published, or found, on YouTube. Examples we have used include:
 Angles in a triangle <http://youtu.be/gG2BZ9o8Pzc>
 Trip to Grandma’s house <http://youtu.be/K0NVdHljT1I>
 Negative x negative is positive? <http://youtu.be/2QyZ7cNts70>
 How tall is a tree? <http://youtu.be/8-Vv-fAsuaY>
 Sum of fractions <http://youtu.be/fSRq886P7D0>
 Mental math example <http://youtu.be/zIE8Vo5xQlM>
 Rebuilding algebraic solution <http://www.youtu.be/pCQosjsSbEA>
 Volume/capacity of a box <http://youtu.be/6mmODphAvJE>
In the discussion that follows we use prompts like: What works? What could be improved? What ideas do you have
after watching these exemplars? How might you use them in the classroom?
Teachers are then challenged to search on YouTube for other examples of EE mathematics videos using the
search terms “explain everything”, “ math” along with any other terms that might help them find videos relevant to
their current classes. They are again asked to reflect on what they see in the videos, considering things such as what
works, what doesn’t work and what they would want to try.
Next, teachers are asked to download and try some EE activities/projects we have created. Once more we
follow the exploration period with a discussion. Asking questions like: What works? What doesn’t work? What
would you choose to use with your own students? and How would you use it in your classes? The EE activities we
have the teachers explore include:
 Canadian coins <https://www.dropbox.com/s/phc3cdwz17jznev/Canadian_change_table.xpl>: This EE
project presents Primary and Intermediate level learners with an activity where they can manipulate images
of coins (high fidelity) and record the process as they demonstrate proficiency in recognition, counting
change, making change, explaining relationships, etc..
 Fraction Strips <https://www.dropbox.com/s/p9r26e9900y0yau/fraction%20strips.xpl>: Students can use
images of various fraction strips to explore such concepts as equivalent fractions and comparative size of
fractions.
 Adding Fractions <https://www.dropbox.com/s/az64oiw9wl9u6me/fraction-rectangles.xpl>: Here we
prepared and manipulated images to justify the need for a common denominator and then unpack the
process that leads to an appropriate answer. Following this video, students might be provided with an EE
project containing useful images and challenged to generate their own demonstration fraction addition with
another expression.
 Multiplying Fractions <https://www.dropbox.com/s/147x7pnld2er51z/rect-mult-fractions.xpl>
By creating a collection of fraction regions (1/2. 1/3, ¼. 1/5) and then generating a set of the possible
fractions that might be represented – in horizontal and vertical orientations - we can manipulate these to
examine the potential meaning of fraction multiplication, and use that model to support the development of
an understanding of the nature of the traditional process.
These are just a few examples that we have generated, but by exploring them we open up a myriad of possibilities –
imagine presenting every student in your class with a complete set of virtual manipulatives (no cost, no prep, no
cleanup, etc.) to support explorations in science (e.g., a collection of rocks to classify in various ways), in social
studies (maps, timelines, etc.), language arts, health, art, etc.
After the exploration and discussion of these EE activities, we provide links to tutorials for the teachers on
Explain Everything:
 Overview <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWF2bFtciho>,
 Demonstration part 1 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpbw7gAJJ48>,
 Demonstration part 2 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzgBrJJor_0>.
These tutorial links are given as references for the teachers to access at their leisure or to use in completing the next
phase of the workshop – making their own activity. They are also directed to the EE website for access to additional
support materials.
For the hands-on portion, we begin with a discussion of the problem solving process, using examples
already shared with the teachers to illustrate the various steps of Polya’s problem solving model:
 Understand the problem (e.g., Angles in a Triangle)
 Make a plan (sketch it out – e.g., ‘Paper’)
 Carry out the plan (using various apps – EE, Paper, Eraser,…)
 Look back (what works? what else?)
We lead the teachers through the process of creating an EE video. Guiding them to understanding through
doing. Every step is explained and discussed, and as we complete the project almost all of the tools and functionality
of the EE app (and a couple others – ‘Paper’ for sketching, ‘Eraser’ for transforming the backgrounds of our
sketches to transparent images) has been explored. While we might imagine it would be difficult for participants to
record the audio portion of their presentation during this shared process we have found that aspect to flow nicely.
As each participant around the table takes a turn recording their animation with audio, the others have an
opportunity to reflect on the other participants’ approach and prepare for their turn.
Teachers are then challenged to start an activity/project to demonstrate or explore something (we may
provide a list of ideas to help with flow). They are asked to consider the following questions as they prepare their
activity/project:
 What are you trying to do?
 How are you going to do it? Here we encourage them to sketch it out on paper before creating it on their
iPad. Then they are encouraged to try to create it on their iPad.
 What worked?
 What can be improved?
 What’s next?
During this process we are circulating, and supporting individuals. Additionally we find that the participants very
quickly become experts and begin helping their neighbors.
Depending on the time available, the teachers may or may not have a completed project by the end of the
time allotted. Regardless we encourage them to share what they have created (the activity/project) with other
workshop participants. This allows them to learn from what others have done, allows them to ask questions and
discover new features, and provides them with feedback on their own creation.
Finally we challenge the participants to create a video presentation. They have the same initial goal of
creating an EE project, but this time we ask them to use that project to make a fixed presentation. They must plan
their presentation, including sketches they will use and the script they will use to explain the concept. Then they are
asked to build it, save it, (possibly edit it a bit with iMovie) and publish it. They then evaluate the efficacy of their
video by sharing it with their fellow workshop participants. Through the ensuing discussion they can get feedback
on their product and ideas for improving it or for their next creation.
Summary
We have found EE to be an incredibly useful tool both for teachers – as they prepare activities and
demonstrations, and for students – as they explore, collaborate, demonstrate and create. We are encouraged by the
enthusiasm we have observed in the teachers in our workshops and by the number of them who have chosen to
collaborate with us as we continue with our research into the impact of iPads and EE activities on student learning.
We look forward to beginning our data collection with students in the next year.
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