Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Screencasting Tools

View the collection of Screencasting resources on this LibGuide created and presented by Linda Straube. Some preliminary pros and cons of each are noted as well as links to each tool and examples of its use at New Trier.

These screencasts can uploaded as a file on the site; or to Vimeo or other Video Channels such as Teacher Tube or YouTube. They can also be easily Tweeted or sent to Facebook. And, as the examples show, it is possible to embed the "video" into a libguide or blog like this one about Historical Fiction Books:



Many ideas for classroom use exist such as "flip the classroom": have your students watch a tutorial and then discuss/work with them the next day in the classroom. Or, experiment with screencasts with book reviews or as tutorials explaining a multi-step task or to share information with other teachers like this rough overview of our Sophomore Service Project:



View our examples and add your own ideas in the comment section of the Screencasting libguide.

TO DO: Consider downloading at least one of those options (takes no time at all) – especially for Screencast-o-matic and screenr -- and experimenting (you do not have to save what you create). If you do want to upload videos, you may find it easier to create a separate gmail and/or twitter account. These sites show short demos themselves and use of the tool is very intuitive, but see us if you have questions.

In a quick summary:
Camtasia -- available by license on select computers;
Jing -- more trial needed;
PowerPoint - using narration and showing a slide show may have value for your class -- it is complicated for our Tech Staff to convert and upload videos produced in this manner, however.
Screencast-o-matic - A personal favorite -- worth trying since it is easy to set-up and use.
Screenr - experiment with this, also. It is another favorite amongst educators.

NEXT AM EXCHANGE MEETING: Tuesday, April 5th – 7:30am in Jim Foster’s office. TOPIC: Twitter and tweet deck by Judy Gressel.

Later in the month (April 19th), Erika Eich will present on the top ten free ideas she saw at ICE. In the meantime, you may also want to subscribe to this month’s Teacher Challenge at EDUBLOG – it is all about free sites on the web. Or subscribe to RSS feed here: http://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/feed/

As always, please let me or JudyG know if you have questions or a topic to suggest. In attendance: Raquelle Brennan, Andy Horne, Judy Gressel, and Linda Straube. Erika and Matt had conflicts.

2 comments:

  1. Please see this Public Service Announcement project at Voya.com. It offers a detailed description of using flip cameras, editing with JayCut and includes student reflections. While conducted with middle school students, it seems like something that teachers may find valuable to review.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just another update: I was listening to Michelle Simmons speak at Library 2.011. Her presentation will be archived here. Jing, especially Jing Pro, seemed to be the preferred tool. One recommendation from her is to include the idea of "framing" a screencast -- add at least one PowerPoint slide to the beginning and end so as to help the viewer. She also suggested looking at Screencasting handbook published in UK.

    ReplyDelete