Life

ShowMe the way to do my homework

22 August 2014

First impressions

If the ads on television and the happy smiles on the faces of parents are anything to go by, school is about to be back in session. The summer is drawing to a close, and all of a sudden it’s time to gather ye last moments of freedom while ye may, because that bell will soon be a-ringing.

For some children, it won’t be that traumatic. They get to hang out with their friends every day, and see the teachers whose lessons they enjoy. For others, however, there might be a bit of dread as they approach the next school year, possibly because there are certain subjects that leave them a bit cold.

There is an app out there that might help. The ShowMe app offers a way for educators and students to share information across the world on an interactive whiteboard. Covering subjects from mathematics to languages, it could just make the difference for struggling students.

Right now it is free to download from the App Store. I have no children, and my school days are long behind me, but my mother is a teacher and I wanted to revisit my heady days of knowing what the heck I was doing in math class…so I downloaded it.

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How it works

So once you’ve got it on your device, you have to create an account. You can use your Facebook credentials, or an email address. Depending on your faith in the security of either of these, you’ll choose one or the other.

As you create your account you’ll be asked what subjects you’re interested in, and then just before this process is complete, it will ask for permission to access your microphone and to send you “push” notifications.

ShowMe announces that you can “learn or teach anything,” but how? Well, along the top you’ll see three tabs: “My ShowMes,” “Explore,” and “+ Create.” These lead you to teach, learn and save your favorite lessons.

Under “My ShowMes” you’ll save lessons you’ve created, see if anyone has “liked” what you’ve produced, organize groups of students so you can share your work with your class (if you’re a teacher), revisit your activity log, and check for any notifications. You can also “Create new ShowMe” here, but we’ll get back to that in a minute.

Under the “Explore” tab you’ll find lessons that are recommended for you, based on the subjects you originally chose, along with lessons you’ve recently visited. Down the left-hand side of the screen are subject tabs: “Math,” “Science,” “History,” “English,” “Language” and “Art.” Tap on any of those, and they will take you to lessons on those subjects, some with sub-headings. For example, under “Math,” you’ll discover the glorious world of topics like “Algebra,” “Geometry,” “Calculus,” and “Trigonometry.” Ahhh…my old friends; we meet again.

Each lesson has the same information attached to it. It gives you the length of time it runs, the specific subject it covers, a picture of the person who created the lesson (which when tapped, will take you to their bio and everything they’ve submitted to the ShowMe app), and a number by a heart symbol, showing how many people have liked that particular lesson.

Finally we come to the “+ Create” tab. A “whiteboard” will appear on your screen, with icons in a bar, that represent an erase tool, undo, clear, record, and numerous colors. This is where teachers can create masterpieces. You press the record button (the wee red circle in the top middle of the screen) and then start drawing on your whiteboard, verbally explaining what you’re doing as you go.

You can change colors while you move through the lesson to highlight areas and text, add images to enhance your methods, undo or erase part or all of your work, and if you need to add extra pages, simply tap on the right arrow in the top right hand corner of the screen to take you to a new whiteboard. No matter how many pages you add, you can move between all of them using those arrows, chatting away on the recording to explain how they all fit into your master plan.

Once you’ve finished creating this lesson, you can save it, give it a name, and then put it out for the world to see, or keep it private, if you prefer.

It does say in the description of this app that students do not have to have the ShowMe app in order to see lessons, but I haven’t looked into that part of it, as I…have the app! It seems that you can access lessons through the website at showme.com.

When I tried it

Well I jumped right into a math lesson, full of beans, with a can-do, I-have-a-degree-in-this kinda attitude, and very quickly found myself out of my depth. As “x” approached “0,” I approached the “exit” button. Perhaps I was setting my sights a little too high at the beginning of this.

I then moved over to “The Power of Powers,” posted by “Mr. Phillips,” a 7th grade math teacher out of Nebraska. He had an image of Daffy Duck in his lesson, which naturally drew me in. By the look of his “likes,” he was a pretty popular educator on this app. From early, I liked this guy. He had a fun way about him. He explained exponents by way of Daffy Duck punching a speed bag. Who can argue with that?

After dabbling in math, I went on to check out what was happening in the subject of art. The first set of lessons covered drawing an eye, hands, and how to use a pencil to find correct angles. Now all I needed was the Sistine Chapel.

The languages looked interesting. I’d always wanted to count to 10 in Korean. This could be a very helpful app indeed.

Final thoughts

I would be interested to know how much the content in this app is regulated. For example, can anyone post any lesson they want, possibly full of mistakes, leading students astray? I can’t imagine that there are people who could be bothered to spend the time deliberately creating a useless lesson to upload to ShowMe, but I suppose you never know. There I’ll be, saying what I think is “Good Morning” in Russian to someone, only to be slapped in the face. I’ve a feeling, however, that this is a minor concern.

From my short experience with ShowMe, it seems to have a lot of potential, and could possibly be a great extra tool for students to use when they’re struggling with particular subjects, or for teachers to share their knowledge via cyberspace. It’s free to download, so it might just be worth giving it a try.

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