Screencasting in the Classroom

By Anonymous -
Screencasting in the classroom is often suggested as a first-step for teachers looking to turn previously created powerpoints or slides presentations into a stand-alone lesson that students can engage with anytime, anywhere, and alone. Basically, screencasting is a process that records a user’s screen and allows the opportunity for a narrator to voice-over or annotate. Though screencasting is a great option for teacher content creation, this post is going to push the envelope and suggest that teachers assign the creation of a screencast as student work. 

 In primary grades, students can screencast and record their reading of a text and teachers can assess the student’s skill level with certain vocabulary words and other measures of fluency.

In math, students can be provided with a fully solved math problem and then narrate the mathematical reasoning that made the solution possible. Or, students can be assigned a problem to completely solve digitally (on a Google Slides show or a Google Drawing) and then narrate it. 

 In all subjects, students can narrate summaries over teacher-created lecture slides as a way to organize their thoughts and build connections. 

  The beauty of many of these examples is that the work can be stored easily and centrally in a single spot (a Google Classroom, or drive, or each student’s personal portfolio) and students can view each other’s screencasts to deepen their own understandings or collect diverse opinions. This relatively simple task allows teachers to get a glimpse into the thinking of students as they work and allows students to organize what they know and reflect on where their gaps in understanding may be. Looking to try screencasting out with your kids? Our district’s WeVideo subscription is a great option that all students have access to with unlimited recording time and ease of editing.

Checkout some of the following student examples:

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