How to Create Social Media Guidelines for Your School | Edutopia.
Author Archives: Mark Glynn
What is Screencasting?
This post contains support mateiral for the Screencasting workshop at the Edtech 2012 conference in NUI Maynooth. Thank you so much to my co-presenter of the workshop Damien Raftery from IT Carlow (@damienraftery)
A screencast is a digital movie in which the setting is partly or wholly a computer screen, and in which audionarration describes the on-screen action. It’s not a new idea. The screencaster’s tools—for video capture, editing, and production of compressed files—have long been used to market software products, and to train people in the use of those products. The term screencast compares with the related term screenshot; whereas screenshot is a picture of a computer screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of the changes over time that a user sees on a computer screen, enhanced with audio narration.
There is an excellent chart available on wikipedia comparing the various software tools available for screencasting
Relevant links
Useful weblinks on screencasting
Academic papers on screencasting
Books
A brief guide to Jing – the free screencasting tool
JIng (Photo credit: blogpocket)
The always-ready program that allows you to instantly capture images and record video on your computer—then share them with anyone through a variety of web 2 tools. The video below gives a nice introduction to Jing and how easy it is to use.
Good points
- It’s easy to use
- it’s free
- It captures both picture and movie from your screen
- it’s very easy to link with other web 2 tools i.e. twitter, facebook etc
- You can download the movie onto your computer to edit if you have an editing program
Bad points
- You are limited to five minutes recording
- you have to install the program on your PC/Mac
If you like what you have just seen but don’t want to download it yet – Try an interactive Jing Tutorial
Related articles
- TechSmith Announces Changes to Jing Pro (freetech4teachers.com)
- Five Best Screen Capture Tools (blowfish12.wordpress.com)
- Screencasting and student feedback (joedale.typepad.com)
A brief guide to ScreenR.com – the web based screencasting tool
ScreenR is a web based screencasting tool that makes it very easy to create and share screencasts
You must have an account to record and publish a screencast but you can sign into an account through Facebook, Twitter, Google, Windows Live or LinkedIn. Alternatively you can just create a “ScreenR” account
This video gives you a very quick overview of screenR
with a more comprehensive walk through available in the video at the bottom of this post
The good points
- It’s free
- it’s easy to use
- it’s web based so its accessible from everywhere with the internet
- you can download your video or export it to youtube
The bad points
- you are limited to five minutes
- zooming in and out during recording is not possible
Some examples using screenR
- How to create a mathcast with a tablet, MS OneNote and Screenr (2mins)
http://www.screenr.com/4AA created using Screenr and a tablet
- Compound Interest Example (3mins)
http://elearn.itcarlow.ie/FM/CEx1/player.html created using Screenr, a tablet and Articulate Studio
Related articles
- 3 Screen Capture Software Options: From Free to Not So Free (professorjosh.wordpress.com)
- 8 Free Screencasting Tools For Making Video Tutorials (smashingapps.com)
- YouTube Settings Teachers and Students Need to Know About (kylepace.wordpress.com)
Free Maths Resources: MangaHigh.com, giving the teacher computer games to teach maths
One of the many excellent sessions at the ICT Edu conference in LIT over the weekend introduced me to Manga-High. With student difficulties in Maths being well publicized in the media in addition press promoting the power of computer games for education purposes, MangaHigh represents the perfect marriage of these two factors. Personally I would love for MangaHigh to be linked via LTI to Moodle providing the perfect solution for any teacher who wants to take advantage of computer gaming in their maths classroom but has little or no technical ICT skills. But well done on all involved to date on creating a superb resource
Relevant links:
http://www.mangahigh.com/en_gb/
http://www.somerandomthoughts.com/blog/2011/11/28/moodle-2-supports-connecting-to-ims-lti-tools/
10 Reasons to use Diigo – Articles – Educational Technology – ICT in Education
Although this is quite an old site, all of the reasons are still valid today
http://www.ictineducation.org/home-page/2009/11/2/10-reasons-to-use-diigo.html
What is Moodle?
Moodle
Moodle (abbreviation for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a free source e-learning software platform, also known as a Course Management System, Learning Management System, or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Moodle is a software package for producing Internet-based courses and web sites. It is a global development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education.
Moodle is provided freely as Open Source software (under the GNU General Public License). Basically this means Moodle is copyrighted, but that you have additional freedoms. You are allowed to copy, use and modify Moodle provided that you agree to: provide the source to others; not modify or remove the original license and copyrights, and apply this same license to any derivative work.
This presentation sums it up it up nicely
A Google a day – use in the classroom
A very interesting tool available through Google which has great potential for any classroom. This short video outlines how simple the technology is to use – all you need is access to the internet
Here are some useful challenges to spark your imagination on how this could work in your class
http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searcheducation/lessons.html
Technology Enhanced Learning 