Doodlecast Pro is a simple, effective, and fun-to-use screen-drawing tool and voice recorder that has multiple uses in a classroom setting.  There are a few teachers in my building that utilize iPads for instruction (sadly we are not yet a 1:1 school), and I’ve already passed along the suggestion to them when I saw that it is currently on sale.  I work as an administrator at the high school level, and the applications for this app in my setting are wide-ranging.  For anyone that wants to “flip” a lesson, or even provide an online version of a review for an assessment, this app would work nicely.

Within a very short time after downloading, I had connected my both my YouTube and Dropbox accounts, and I was ready to begin recording.  There are multiple pen sizes, colors and opacity settings that can be changed on the fly during recording, or you can pause to change settings.  There are several background options to choose from, including graphing & lined paper options for note taking or showing graphing examples for math.  During my test, I preferred the dark background, utilizing bright pen colors a’la the Khan Academy videos. 

The interface is clean and easy to navigate.  In their recent update, they’ve included what they call a “flub” feature, which allows you to rewind up to 18.5 seconds of your recording to fix any mistakes or… flubs.  Aptly named, and a great addition to the app.

The most useful feature is the ability to move quickly between slides or pages of the presentation, a feature missing from a similar app I’ve used called “ShowMe”.  I imported pictures saved from my browser and created a short, four minute review of

ne of my favorite topics from my U.S. History teaching days (The Cuban Missile Crisis), but immediately thought of the potential for taking screenshots of an already created Keynote or PowerPoint presentation, importing them and adding to sequential pages for creating an online review that students could easily access on YouTube.  The cursor feature to display a pointer is also useful during the recording to call attention to specific points on the screen without having to draw. 

There’s potential use in any subject, but specifically for math teachers at the secondary level, briefly reviewing new concepts and sharing to your YouTube account for student access would be a breeze.

This app was well worth the $.99 sale-price.  Any classroom teacher with an iPad should take advantage.  Here’s a link to download Doodlecast Pro. For more info, checkout doodlecastpro.com and watch their brief introductory video.