Lately, I have been exploring the possibilities for using screencasts in my sixth grade co-taught Language Arts classes. I started playing around with screencasts by using the tool Screencast-O-Matic, which is very intuitive and simple. All I had to do was download the software, make the box as large as I desired, and start recording. When I reviewed my screencast, the audio was clear and it only took a few minutes to complete! It is essentially like teaching the lesson once instead of multiple times. Once you are done with the screencast, you have several options on how to publish it; this is where it begins to get complicated.
You can either upload it to your Screencast-O-Matic account, publish it to YouTube, or save it to your computer. (WARNING: All of these options take several minutes, so prepare not to video back-to-back. You can also only record up to fifteen minutes of your lesson!) I prefer YouTube, but if you choose this option you need to be very careful about your student's safety. In the videos below, I only referred to my students as sir and ma'am to avoid any privacy issues. I also liked that their voices weren't easily distinguishable in the audio. To prevent this from being a stumbling block in my lesson, I usually repeated and rephrased what the students said.
Screencasts would be useful in a classroom in several different ways. Screencasts can be used to make tutorials for parents and students, self-paced stations, substitute lesson plans, flipping the stations, and as a review. Below this blog, you can see a screencast I have created for my students. These screen casts are reviewing Argumentative Writing and Selecting Evidence with my students before the Georgia Milestones test in April. When we had several snow days, the students did not remember too much from our introduction lesson! Luckily for me, they wanted to watch the screencast to review. I got to sit back and watch myself teach it all over again, instead of, repeating what I had just taught during the last class meeting.
Overall, I believe screencasts are one of the most useful tools we have learned about and I will continue to use them as documentation and as a way to reinforce learning with students.
You can either upload it to your Screencast-O-Matic account, publish it to YouTube, or save it to your computer. (WARNING: All of these options take several minutes, so prepare not to video back-to-back. You can also only record up to fifteen minutes of your lesson!) I prefer YouTube, but if you choose this option you need to be very careful about your student's safety. In the videos below, I only referred to my students as sir and ma'am to avoid any privacy issues. I also liked that their voices weren't easily distinguishable in the audio. To prevent this from being a stumbling block in my lesson, I usually repeated and rephrased what the students said.
Screencasts would be useful in a classroom in several different ways. Screencasts can be used to make tutorials for parents and students, self-paced stations, substitute lesson plans, flipping the stations, and as a review. Below this blog, you can see a screencast I have created for my students. These screen casts are reviewing Argumentative Writing and Selecting Evidence with my students before the Georgia Milestones test in April. When we had several snow days, the students did not remember too much from our introduction lesson! Luckily for me, they wanted to watch the screencast to review. I got to sit back and watch myself teach it all over again, instead of, repeating what I had just taught during the last class meeting.
Overall, I believe screencasts are one of the most useful tools we have learned about and I will continue to use them as documentation and as a way to reinforce learning with students.