Welcome to my blog! I'm Karen Belt, a Deputy Principal, working at Lynmore Primary School in Rotorua, New Zealand. In the past I have taught Years 0 - 4 and used 1:1 iPads to engage and motivate learners and improve student achievement. This blog documents my teaching and leadership journey and my learning processes with iPads in the classroom. I am a Google Certified Educator #SYD17 and I'm proud of having been a member of the inaugural Manaiakalani Digital Teaching Academy(MDTA) program and a Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher (MIT) and an inaugural Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir teacher.

Wednesday 28 June 2017

Explain Everything Classic - navigating the major changes

With the recent Explain Everything update, some of my learners are not sure where to locate features that they use frequently.  I've made some easy help cards for them which I have displayed around the room as a visual reference.  They were all created using Google Draw and they may help other teachers who also use Explain Everything in the classroom.  I've shared some of them below, and they are available to be used by other teachers from this Google Drive folder.

The ones I have so far created are:

  • adding new slides, deleting, moving between slides
  • exporting a project to Google Drive (or similar)
  • opening a project from Google Drive (or similar)
  • saving and exiting from a project
  • deleting audio/video recordings
  • changing colours



Sunday 25 June 2017

Exciting changes in Explain Everything 4

I've been a huge fan of using Explain Everything since I started teaching and have definitely enjoyed the new features after installing the update late last week!  If, like me, you love using Explain Everything but are used to the old version, these great videos are worth three minutes of your time as they are a great overview of the new features.




 Having only created a few projects this weekend already here are some of my favourite new additions:
  • The draw/fill option
  • Adding a sound bite from within Explain Everything
  • The ruler feature - my lines have always been just that little bit crooked ;)
  • The eraser - so many times my learners have wanted to remove a part of the drawing they had added earlier and haven't been able to - until now! 
I'm really looking forward to using the new version over the coming weeks!