So, have you noticed that your students are tuning out during your lessons? Are they constantly going to their devices in order to ‘stay’ engaged? Do you think that meeting students in their space would make the lessons more engaging? more authentic? or even more real for students?
Touchcast may be a new tool that may enable you to engage students with some of your own lessons, but also may provide a great tool for students to demonstrate their learning.
I have to admit, work primarily with Apple Products (I have a MacBook Pro, iPad and iPhone) and was somewhat disappointed to see that there was no Desktop App for a Mac, as I find that I do most of my creation on my laptop. I am still trying to get used to creating on an iPad. Not only am I having to wrap my head around the complexities of Video Apps (Vapps), I am also having to learn how to create on the iPad. Nonetheless, I signed up for my free account today, just to try this tool out.
After spending a few minutes getting my account set up on the iPad, and then exploring my channel on the computer, I thought that I would be able to easily go about and just get started making something, just to experiment and explore. However, I quickly found that this tool is perhaps a little more complex than I originally thought. So, I stopped, thought about whether this would be worth my time to play around with for a while, and then found that Touchcast offers training manuals and suggestions for integrating touch casts into the classroom.
I guess sometimes you just need to go slow, in order to go fast!
Over the next couple of weeks I am going to try and learn this app, and will write about what I learn, as well as what I think about this tool. It is definitely not as intuitive as Nearpod, but at the same time, I think it is going to me so much more powerful! It’s just going to take time to figure it all out!
Brian Leichnitz 