It's been a while since I've updated my blog - between the new baby, coaching, and just trying to keep my head above water in the classroom, blogging has been the least of my concerns. But I survived and now that it's summer I have the time to reflect about how the past school year went. It was full of exciting ups and downs and I have a long list of things to do differently this next year as I try to use technology in my classroom to help students learn more effectively.
Screencasting
Turning my lectures into screencasts (video podcasts or vodcasts) was my most consuming new adventure this past year. A screencast is just a video capture of whatever is happening on your computer screen. With the right software you also get audio, additional video from webcams or other cameras, and the ability to edit. I've mentioned this before but I originally got this idea from two chemistry teachers in Colorado (Jon Bergmann and Aaron Samms). Be sure to check out how they use screencasts in their classroom:
Teacher Vodcasting Ning
Educational Vodcasting website
But first a little background. Prior to this year I was growing more and more frustrated with how much class time my lectures took up and how little my students learned from them. Then to make it worse, when my students would go home to do their homework they'd get stuck and more often than not, give up. There had to be a better way to use my class time more effectively and help my kids learn.
Unfortunately lecture is a fast, efficient way to get important information for the class to my students, and still has a place in education, especially when they move on to college. Jon and Aaron's solution is to stop using class time for lecture and instead create screencasts of those lectures and assign that as homework. This opens up valuable class time for answering questions, doing labs and demos and being able to spend more one-on-one time with students.
All I decided to do was to take the lecture presentations (Keynote, PowerPoint, ActiveInspire, etc) I would normally give in class, pull them up on my computer the night before, fire up my screencasting program (Camtasia for Mac), and go through my lecture like I normally would but without my normal student audience. Then I'd do a little editing, render the file into a format my kids could use, and find a way to get it into my students hands (iPods, home computer, DVD etc).
Here's the equipment I needed to produce a screencast:
1. Computer (PC or Mac - I'm a Mac guy)
2. Screencast Software like
Techsmith's Camtasia for Mac or
Camtasia Studio
3. Presentation (Keynote, PowerPoint, ActiveInspire, etc)
4. Tablet for annotating presentation (I use a
Wacom Bamboo, but there are lots of other options)
5. Microphone (I use a
Snowball, but once again, there are lots of options)
After you've made your screencast you need a way to get it to your students. I was really worried about this at first, but found that regardless of my student's home situation there is always a way for them to see the screencast on their own time. Here are a few options:
- For the kids with iPods or iPhones - Camtasia lets you export your file to iTunes so kids can subscribe to them for free. We have a lot of access issues in my school so my superintendent found a way to get a classroom set of iPod Touches for me. This has been a great resource!
- For the kids with high speed internet at home - Camtasia lets you export your screencasts in lots of different formats that are compatible with TeacherTube or screencast.com (a hosting site through Techsmith).
- For the kids with a computer at home but slow to no internet - Camtasia lets you export your screencast as a QuickTime file so kids can save screencast files to a USB drive at school and then pull them up at home.
- For the kids without a computer at home - It is possible to burn these to a DVD so kids can see them without even needing a computer.
Wow - long post! I'll include more details later.
