I have recently been very impressed by the quality of the Reflector 2 app made by Squirrels LLC to mirror mobile and tablet devices to a computer device. It was this very application, at the very reasonable price point of $14.99 (~£9.50) , which we ended up using to make the promotional videos on our website at Discover eLearning.
And on Sunday the high quality apps continue to come from this developer with the announcement of Reflector Student.
What Reflector Student does is tag a very neat additional feature to Reflector 2, which is that not only can you now stream your device screen to your computer (to put onto a large display and/or record for sharing later) but also stream your display to any number of other devices. Naturally this has the greatest user benefits in a classroom environment, hence the developers named this feature with the word Student. The Student app is available for both iOS and Android devices for no charge.
So why am I writing a blog post on this app? Well, I think this new feature is going to be very neat. First off for learners with visual difficulties who will be able to have their teacher’s presentation put directly onto their device closer to them (for no additional cost to the student). Secondly it opens up classroom activities quite broadly. Straight away I’m thinking of scenarios where the teacher could have a puzzle on the screen, such as an ice breaker, to get the students quickly engaged. It also has a lot of merit for note taking, whereby if the presentation is in the style of a lecture, then the student can very quickly take a screen shot at the points they wish to scribble or annotate with their own notes.
Apparently getting connected over WiFi is quite straight forward too, with a number of device discovery methods available.
I’d like to hear from anyone who goes ahead and uses this app in their classroom for your feedback. Please leave your comments below or follow me on Twitter.
Chris
