Thing 2: Screencasting

Thing 2: Screencasting

I was so excited once again that the tool we are learning this week is one that I have wanted to try for awhile. I have parents and students ask me all the time how to access Overdrive. I find it works best to take the time to walk students through it individually at the point in which they need it. When I would present it as a whole group, it would motivate students to want to use Overdrive, but I would need to actually walk them through it once they tried to do it themselves. Therefore, I thought it would be nice to have a screencast embeded on my site with step-by-step instructions how to do it.

After looking over all of the choices, Screenr was the tool that appealed to me most because I wasn't interested in doing screenshots. I struggled with Screenr for a long time, but not actually because of the tool. The tool itself was actually very easy to use. At first I needed to download Java, which was long overdue. Once I did that I thought I would simply, just push record. Well, unfortunately it wasn't that simple. I would push record and it would keep loading but nothing would happen. Finally, I decided to try a different browser, I was using Firefox (I know...). That did the trick! It loaded right away when I used Google Chrome. It took me a several tries to complete my screencast, just because I misspoke, but the tool itself was very basic and easy to use. I would definitely recommend it. Especially if you are looking for a simple tool for the students to use.

Here is the Screenr I created for using Overdrive:
 

The other tool I tried was Screencast-o-matic. This was another very simple tool to use. I did have to do a little downloading at first because I have 10.6 version of the MAC. Once I did that though, it was simple to use. I did actually like one feature better about this tool compared to Screenr and that is that it put a big yellow circle around my cursor, which made it easier for the viewer to follow. I was worried about having to upload this directly to YouTube to get a code to embed, but I didn't need to. Once I uploaded it to Screencast-o-matic I was able get the embed code. This was actually nicer than Screenr too because I was able to choose the size I wanted my screencast box, allowing me to format it to fit nicely on my website. Overall this tool is very easy to use and would be simple for students to use for projects of their own.

Here is my screencast for how to download a book from Overdrive to your kindle.




Next year we are starting Classroom 21 in the elementary school, as I mentioned in a previous posts. I could see the kids creating Screencasts next year in that classroom. They could use it for several instructional purposes, but I was thinking it would be neat if I had them use this to show me how they determined the site they were using for one of their research projects was actually a credible site. They could point out the different areas of the website that they used to base their decision on. Then I could use these to instruct students at the lower grades. If I was to use do this with the students I would be sure to use the Screencast planning sheet that Polly shared. I am interested to hear some of the ideas that others have for students using this tool.

I look forward to seeing what tools each of you tried and I am hoping to get some great ideas. In the meantime, if you want to check out my LMC webpage with my screencast you can visit: http://lakegeorgelmc.weebly.com/resources.html