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ISTE Top 10 - #4 - Zaption (?)




This WAS my favorite thing at ISTE but I just found out the company sold and is closing on September 30th. WHAT?!?! 

It is a lot like EdPuzzle (a site where you can embed questions in YouTube videos) with the exception that there is a "presentation mode".

With EdPuzzle you can have students join your class and assign them YouTube videos, with questions to answer embedded in the video...this works well if YouTube isn't blocked and you don't have buffering issues.

What I liked about Zaption is the presentation mode (which EdPuzzle doesn't have). Basically a teacher can show the YouTube video (with questions) on their interactive white board (in a lot of schools YouTube is not blocked for teachers). Students would join the presentation with their device. As soon as a question pops up within the video it gets pushed out to students to answer (so they aren't watching the video on their device just answering questions).

The only reason why I am highlighting it is that I want EdPuzzle to adopt this feature (email already sent!) and I want to follow the purchase of Zaption to see if they are going to rebrand the product in the future.

Update...this is the response I got from Edpuzzle..kudos for the quick reply but UGH on the response: Thanks for your suggestion but the presentation mode doesn't match our product. We believe each student should learn at their own pace and that is one of the most important parts in EDpuzzle. We understand it can be engaging and useful (specially) if the district blocks YouTube. There are some really good apps that enable you to do something similar. I hope you understand our position. We will definitely keep working on some surprises for our teachers.

 I am going to play with some of our programs to see if I can't do something similar...I'm thinking ClassFlow might work with their new desktop feature. 
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