From the course: Learning with Your Mobile Device

Combining mobile strategies for personalized content review

From the course: Learning with Your Mobile Device

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Combining mobile strategies for personalized content review

- It's not enough just to read text or watch videos. Research shows that summarizing the content you review can increase how much you understand and how much you remember by around 20% each. Taking notes is a good way to summarize, but you're gonna go one step further. Research also shows that students who are asked to teach someone else remembered important information better than students just expecting to take a test. That's because you have to organize the information and put it into your own words. So pretend that you're teaching the idea to someone else by recording a screencast video on whatever mobile device you want, a laptop, a tablet, or a smartphone. Here's an app to help you do that. First of course, open the app Explain Everything. If you haven't used it before, you'll need to create an account. Start with the free 30-day trial. Here we are in Explain Everything, where I'll start creating a screencast. Create a new project. Select your whiteboard pattern, and choose either portrait or landscape view. I'll choose the grid, and landscape view. On the first slide, list the main ideas you need to remember for a test. Use the text or pen tool from the menu on the left. Then use the add slide button in the bottom right corner. Add a slide or two to explain each main idea with supporting information. Use the add tool to insert a picture, webpage, equation, or audio or video clip. If you'd prefer making Google Slides presentations, you can import one from the cloud. When you're ready to teach the concept, it's time to record. Click the red record button. If it's your first time, Explain Everything will ask to access your microphone. Then start your presentation. For each slide, record brief sound bytes, no more than a minute or two, then stop the recorder. If you don't like the recording for a slide, you can do it over. Use the highlighter or pen tool to emphasize key points as you talk. When you're finished, you have a video that you can use to study. Share it with your friends, and ask them to share one with you. If they wonder why, tell them that making screencast summaries of what they've learned can increase what they understand and remember.

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