Day Thirteen: Podcasting/Screencasting

A lot of the tools and techniques I use in the classroom come from solving little problems that stand in the way of fluid lessons.  You have all had this situation as well:  you go through a lesson and everything seems perfect--students are actively engaged, they are asking good questions, and they are able to answer all of your questions.  The next day you put up the DO NOW and you are met with blank stares and comments like "we never learned this."  It is almost like someone erased their minds while they slept.  One day I asked the class what happened and one of my better students said, "Well, we understand when we are here, but then we go home and we don't remember how you solved the problem.  It would be great if you could videotape the example problem and post it on your website."  Then the light bulb clicked on!  If I could find a way to record what I was doing and post short (less than 5 minutes) example problems I could not only give the students a way to review the material that night after school and right before the test.  Now to figure out how to do it.

There are a lot of ways to do a podcast.  You can create a podcast that contains only audio using a program like Audacity.  These would be great in a foreign language class where the students can listen to the vocabulary and pronunciation of words and don't need a visual reference.  However, for my class I like to record video and audio because I use them as instruction so I need a slightly more sophisticated program.  A great online screencasting (program that captures images from your computer screen) is Screencast-o-matic.  Here's a short demo video on how it works (basically a screencast on how to make a screencast):

If you follow the link above to Screencast-o-matic's site, you will see they have both a free version and a Pro version.  In the free version you are limited to 15 minute recordings and require you to download the video to your computer which you could upload to a website later.  The Pro version (which of course costs money) allows for online storage on their site and basically gives you a channel to show your videos from similar to YouTube.  However, YouTube is accessible on most cell phones and even allows for downloads on iPhones which the others do not.

Now I want to showcase the product of one of sponsors, TechSmith.  No, I am not just showing this because they are our sponsor.  JING is a wonderful tool that is so unbelievably simple to use.  Here is a video demonstrating that.

What I love about JING is it downloads to your desktop so that with a quick click of a button you are recording everything that happens on your screen.  It can capture your voice from a microphone, but does not allow you to import music in the free version.  In the free version you are also limited to 5 minute videos. However, in the Pro version, a lot more resources are accessible to you including editing and uploading mp3 tracks.  TechSmith also saves all of your videos to www.screencast.com which, again, is free, but has some limitations as to how many files and what size you can store there.  But, for less than $100, you can get your own site through Screencast.com.  I actually upload my podcasts there as well as YouTube because there is an iTunes feed from Screencast.com.  I submitted the site to the iTunes Store and all of my podcasts are available for download through iTunes (yes, they're free!).  My students can now download them to their computer or mp3 player and watch my any time of the day.  I have even had some say they watched whole lessons on the bus ride into school on the day of a test.

So, as always, the question becomes "How are you going to use Podcasting/Screencasting in your classroom?"

Here are some general links to get your brain turning:
Mr. Seigel's YouTube Channel
Ideas for Podcasting in the Classroom
Integrating Podcasting into the Classroom
Podcasting in Plain English

Oh, and if you have an iPad, check out Educreations and ScreenChomp for great screencasting software.

Weekend Update

First, the Technology Integration Teams would like to thank everyone who has viewed and commented on the blog posts so far.  Here are some interesting statistics that we wanted to share with you:
Number of posts: 3
Number of page views in January: 435
Number of page views in February: 1296
Number of comments: 81
Number of countries with at least 1 viewer:  11 (including Romania, Canada, France & Colombia)
That's right, we are international!!  It has been wonderful talking with colleagues about the different web tools and how they are using them in the classroom.  Keep up the great conversations!

We wanted to take a minute and bring to your attention one of our sponsors, TechSmith.

TechSmith is a great company filled with people who are passionate about helping teachers bring more technology into the classroom.  Some of their products that you may have heard of are Jing, Snagit, Camtasia Studio, and ScreenChomp.  All of these programs allow both teachers and students to create screencasts of their work to share on the Internet.  Jing and ScreenChomp are both free programs and we encourage you to try them out with your classes.  They are extremely easy to use and are designed for both the novice and advanced users.  Just a note, ScreenChomp is available only on the iPad.

In a later post, we will be introducing podcasts and screencasts and the TechSmith products will be highlighted for both their ease of use and their functionality.

Thank you to all of the people at TechSmith for their continued support for education and more importantly for helping us with giveaways for participants of this Web Challenge.