"SCREENCASTING" and PODCASTING
"Screencasting" and podcasting are one of my favorite tools and my students love it. A screencast captures everything you select on the screen and records your voice. You can use a picture, a built in camera, a power point...anything that you want to show. The neat tutorials that we find in the internet, are made using some kind of screencast program. I have tried different ones on the desktop and the iPad like show me or screen chomp , where you can also draw on the screen; but...there are difficulties to SHARE these videos. SCREENCAST-O-MATIC is the program that we normally use in the school and both teachers and students find it easy to use. You do not need to download a program or open an account, it is free ( something that we appreciate because many of them charge you for something eventually...)
WHAT DO WE USE THEM FOR?WHAT GRADES?
I have worked with my grade 3s and 4s , but we have also done it with our grade 2 buddies and they did great. I know that other teachers at my school even do it with grade 1s. It is amazing how they just get it from the beginning.
Besides the individual practice, this kind of activity can be used as a listening exercise.One of the advantages are:
One of their favorite activities is scoring other students. Sometimes, after their presentations, we create a rubric and then they can evaluate their own classmates. The advantage is that we can always watch again. For the shyest ones is also helpful because it gives them certain privacy in their recording and eventually they get used to speak in front of the class.
I also use it a lot during our SPANISH PERFORMANCE TASKS. When we do the speaking part, they record a screencast-o-matic individually, after that, we do the written part. They have to write about somebody else's favorite hobby, and the fact that we have it recorded, facilitates the process of writing, because we can stop and repeat.
SO...WHAT DO I DO WITH THE RECORDING...DO WE POST IT ON YOUTUBE?
Well, that's a big no-no, unless you have specific permission from the board and the parents. Of course we need somewhere to post our students' productions, and that is where your class blog, wiki, weekly, name it.... come into play. We have been working with wikis for two years now , they are free and relatively easy to use for the students. I create a page for each student inside the class wiki where they post their projects, thoughts, pictures...and of course! our screencast-o-matic videos. It works really well and no matter in what computer you do it because it will be available online, thus, saving a lot of time and headaches looking for the file on the server.
Anyways , new tools appear every day and now I am using more weebly, which is a more visual , widget-based platform. So far, the educational version is free. In the school sites page we talk more about this.
I am sure you can also use it with D2L, I just gave up on it because it is not very user-friendly, and I need something that my students can handle well.
I also have a podcast channel where I post my students works , so I can have them in one place and re-visit. I use PODOMATIC, which so far, it is free for me, but you need to create an account, of course. You also need parents permission if the student face appears. I highly recommend them, however, when they are doing a video , not to use their face ( although they love it...)
There are many different programs to create a podcast: Garage band, Voicethread, Audiopal, Audioboo... I have used mostly AUDIOPAL, it is free, it does not require installation or login . You record, save , get the html code, and paste it on your website.
I have used podcasting for different purposes. The most common one: to enhance a written message or text. Like in this vocabulary page
WHAT DO WE USE THEM FOR?WHAT GRADES?
I have worked with my grade 3s and 4s , but we have also done it with our grade 2 buddies and they did great. I know that other teachers at my school even do it with grade 1s. It is amazing how they just get it from the beginning.
Besides the individual practice, this kind of activity can be used as a listening exercise.One of the advantages are:
- The material is authentic
- They are interested in knowing what is the listening about.
- It motivates students since they can see what they are able to produce in the target language
- They can easily share with their parents how they speak in Spanish( or any other L2) in their school context
One of their favorite activities is scoring other students. Sometimes, after their presentations, we create a rubric and then they can evaluate their own classmates. The advantage is that we can always watch again. For the shyest ones is also helpful because it gives them certain privacy in their recording and eventually they get used to speak in front of the class.
I also use it a lot during our SPANISH PERFORMANCE TASKS. When we do the speaking part, they record a screencast-o-matic individually, after that, we do the written part. They have to write about somebody else's favorite hobby, and the fact that we have it recorded, facilitates the process of writing, because we can stop and repeat.
SO...WHAT DO I DO WITH THE RECORDING...DO WE POST IT ON YOUTUBE?
Well, that's a big no-no, unless you have specific permission from the board and the parents. Of course we need somewhere to post our students' productions, and that is where your class blog, wiki, weekly, name it.... come into play. We have been working with wikis for two years now , they are free and relatively easy to use for the students. I create a page for each student inside the class wiki where they post their projects, thoughts, pictures...and of course! our screencast-o-matic videos. It works really well and no matter in what computer you do it because it will be available online, thus, saving a lot of time and headaches looking for the file on the server.
Anyways , new tools appear every day and now I am using more weebly, which is a more visual , widget-based platform. So far, the educational version is free. In the school sites page we talk more about this.
I am sure you can also use it with D2L, I just gave up on it because it is not very user-friendly, and I need something that my students can handle well.
I also have a podcast channel where I post my students works , so I can have them in one place and re-visit. I use PODOMATIC, which so far, it is free for me, but you need to create an account, of course. You also need parents permission if the student face appears. I highly recommend them, however, when they are doing a video , not to use their face ( although they love it...)
There are many different programs to create a podcast: Garage band, Voicethread, Audiopal, Audioboo... I have used mostly AUDIOPAL, it is free, it does not require installation or login . You record, save , get the html code, and paste it on your website.
I have used podcasting for different purposes. The most common one: to enhance a written message or text. Like in this vocabulary page
I have also used Podcast , in this case, Garage band, to make the recording of the music for our play "Don Quijote de la Mancha"( presented in our school in June 2012). I recorded all the music and made sections for each scene. Later I did a recording with the music form beginning to end, without stopping. This was very helpful because I posted it on our wiki and they could rehearse at home. It gave us a good sense of the time and they were able to identify what happened in every musical change. It came up very neat and I just had to press play at the beginning of the show. (In the playlist below it is under " Don Quijote").
For each scene, I created a screencast with the script so that they could work individually or in groups independently and still listen to the pronunciation.
For each scene, I created a screencast with the script so that they could work individually or in groups independently and still listen to the pronunciation.
On a more practical and less creative level, I also created a podcast to give an assignment to my students on a sick day. I had lost my voice and I was not sure if any spanish speaking teacher was going to come, so I used the typing tool in Audiopal and created a recording with a robotic voice. It came up funny , and when I chose the voice I picked up a female voice in Spanish and you do not want to hear the pronunciation of "screencast" in spanish...It was a comic moment. These are the instructions and the recording:
Hola chicos! hoy no estaré con vosotros, pero durante la hora que tenéis los ordenadores váis a hacer otra grabación en español usando el "screencast-o-matic". El tema esta vez es "Un día especial". Tienes que pensar en un día que fue muy especial para tí y que recuerdas con agrado.
Puedes empezar así :" Hoy voy a hablar de un día especial. Para mí un día muy especial fue cuando.........................Lo pasé muy bien porque........................ ese día estaban conmigo...........................Me acuerdo de que ................................ Nunca olvidaré cuando ......................................fue estupendo! Nunca olvidaré este día tan especial!
Hola chicos! hoy no estaré con vosotros, pero durante la hora que tenéis los ordenadores váis a hacer otra grabación en español usando el "screencast-o-matic". El tema esta vez es "Un día especial". Tienes que pensar en un día que fue muy especial para tí y que recuerdas con agrado.
Puedes empezar así :" Hoy voy a hablar de un día especial. Para mí un día muy especial fue cuando.........................Lo pasé muy bien porque........................ ese día estaban conmigo...........................Me acuerdo de que ................................ Nunca olvidaré cuando ......................................fue estupendo! Nunca olvidaré este día tan especial!
And this was one of the results.