One way of helping students learn content or to understand concepts is to create a screen cast of your lesson and upload it to your You Tube channel for them to view as part of their homework or as a revision tool. There are many screen capture tools on the web that are free. The one that I prefer is Screen O Matic. Once you have an account you have access to 15 minutes of free screen capture time per video. The tool allows you to capture whatever is happening on your computer screen or interactive white board as well as audio and then turns it into a video.
Capturing your lesson notes and explanations is just one way of using screen capture technology. You can use it to:
- get your students to demonstrate their learning by creating their own videos with explanations of concepts or topics.
- produce an instructional video on a topic that you can use when required as part of a topic. This could be useful to help differentiate the class. While working with one group the video can be assisting another. Build up a library of these on your You Tube channel to use when needed.
- produce a video that helps explain a concept or topic to upload to You Tube that can be used for homework. The video can help parents assist their children.
Screen capture technology is not only restricted to the web. The iPad has a wide range of apps that do the same thing. The two I have used are Educreations and Show Me.
I have used this technology (Screen O Matic, Educreations and Show Me) this year to create videos for my Year 12’s in physical education. These videos were created prior to me needing them and are designed to be used by my students as another way to access curriculum content or review topics. Ed has also used this technology (Screen O Matic) with his Year 9 maths class. Ed captures the explicit teaching parts of his maths classes live while presenting to the students (using Screen O Matic and the interactive whiteboard). This is a really impressive use of this tool. Students can go home and do their required home work and access Ed’s video explanations at home. What a great resource for his students!
If you are interested in using this technology then ask Ed or myself for help. Yes that’s right I said ask Ed for help with technology – he has done an awesome job using technology to help his student’s learning.
Example of video made using Educreations app – this video is an example of using the iPad to capture a lesson ‘live’. In my Stage 1 PE class (mostly yr 10’s) I hooked up the iPad to the data projector and then wrote on the iPad which recorded the text and my audio. As there is no IWB in science lab 1 the iPad replaced the IWB as the presentation tool.