Monday, March 24, 2014

Classflow's a Go!

So...my seester's beau asked me to take a look at Classflow and let him know what I thought about it. I signed up for an account yesterday and spent about an hour playing around with it. It's a lot like Powerpoint only better and it was super easy to use once I created a free account!
I created a couple of math lessons for this week and used it in my class today. Unfortunately, we're not super tecky at mi escuela (my school...did I use that Spanish right, Irmz?!) so I didn't experience the interactive part. I don't have a smart board/promethean board but I do have a projector so that is what I used.
My thoughts....I'll let my "Yea's be yea's and my nay's be nay's" here:

1. Yea..It definitely saved me time! I had the lessons ready and never turned my back to the class. I already had the examples written in and never had to write anything on the board during the lesson. Think with me...if I spend even just 3 minutes a day writing math problem examples on the white board when introducing a new lesson and replace those 3 minutes with already prepared examples... 175 days times 3=525 minutes of classtime SAVED and MAXIMIZED! That's almost 9 hours gained to our year together!

2. Nay...I  HATED the stylist/pen thingy for writing in examples.  I'm a super big perfectionist when it comes to my handwriting so I DID NOT LIKE THE WAY MY HANDWRITING LOOKED!

3. Yea...I liked that I could upload videos and documents to a lesson. I'm already planning to use it again when recaping Pearl Harbor by inserting FDR's "Yesterday" speech.

4. Yea...I liked that you could share your created lessons with other teachers and view other teacher's plans.

5. Nay...I found the "Play" button never really played. It continued to say "preparing to play" so I found it much easier to simply hit "edit" and show them each slide by clicking on it.

6. Nay...every time I added a text box, it took forever to release.

7. Yea...I LOVED that you can email your lesson to ANYONE even if they don't have a classflow account as a way to collaborate with other team members!

8. Yea...I liked that it was a cloud and accessible from anywhere!

Overall...I'd say Classflow's a Go! I know I've already planned to use it again and this is coming from one technology illiterate gal. Most of my nay's are I'm sure format issues that I don't know how to use and with a few tutorials I'm sure that could be easily fixed!

Below are some pic's of how I used it.

Just projected it up the white board!



In the above pic, you can see that on my desk I turned my computer around and simply used the mouse when I was ready to go to the next slide. This was also an easy way to go back and make references to other slides throughout their seatwork.
I'm also positive that there are a lot of better ways to use it...but working with what I know and have....I still really liked it! Sign up for a free account and see what you think here: Classflow

This post was just for you Jim!

2 comments:

  1. Yes you did use say "my school" correctly! Gold star for you!
    Is ClassFlow like an upgraded PowerPoint for teachers?

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    Replies
    1. Yay! And yes, you could even use it with the kids you tutor! You should check it out!

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