Screencasting & App Smashing

1. A Classic Essay Re-Imagined:

Have students write a formal essay in Google Docs, then download the docs as a PDF. Using the PDF, students can log into Kami, a Google Add-on & PDF annotation tool. Working in pairs or teams, have students collaborate to give peer-to-peer feedback. Be sure to give students specific instructions for how and what feedback to give their peers (IE: Underline the thesis statement. If the thesis is missing a “because” statement or reasons, comment on the thesis.)

Once students have collaborated to give feedback in Kami, have record a screencast reflection of their essay feedback and what they will change about their essay. Have them share the annotated PDF & their screencast reflection in a Padlet. This step is critical in giving them an audience for their writing -- come back to this Padlet after revisions have been made and have them add their final draft with commentary to the Padlet. Through this app-chain students will see and hear how their writing grew while learning from others’ mistakes. Variations of this may include screencasting to provide teacher-to-student feedback in video form (digital writing conference) or screencasting after revisions to reflect through comparison.

2. Interactive Timeline Presentations:

Have students work together to create graphics of detailed timelines or the steps of a process using Google Drawing or Canva. Explain that in the graphic they should use minimum details, as they will add roll-over details in ThingLink. Once they have their base graphic, for example a timeline with dates and labels, have them download the image as a JPEG or PNG to then be uploaded into ThingLink as a canvas. Using ThinkLink, have students add roll-over details and context for each point on the timeline. This is what makes the timeline interactive.

Next, as a form of presentation, you can then have students screencast their own timelines, adding context or citing research in their video. You could alternatively have students screencast another team’s timeline, reflecting on what they learned from it or how it fits into what they already know about that time. This concept of creation, screencasting a ThingLink, could work well for Jigsaw-style learning, where each team has a different topic or content and has to present it to others so they too can learn from each other. The final step of any creative task is for students to share their work with an audience. In this case, have them share their screencasts via Padlet or Google Classroom; I love Padlet because students can upvote, like, and comment on posts. This will give the class a purpose to their work and makes the audience’s role more interactive and engaging.

3. Peer-to-Peer Video Tutorials

I have always believed that if you can teach it, you truly know it (or end up learning it in the process), which is why I love designing learning experiences for students where they are in the teacher-seat. Having students create peer-to-peer tutorials is a great way to assess whether or not students truly know their stuff! In this nonlinear learning task using AwwApp, a digital whiteboard, have students create a tutorial of any concept or problem-solving technique while screencasting.

For the screencast to be successful, they need to first develop a plan for what they will draw or show on the AwwApp whiteboard, and then film. Use LucidChart or Google Suite tools to have them visually develop and showcase their plan and content for the tutorial. With all student work, but especially tutorials, it is important for students to have an audience because it gives purpose to their task. Have students share their tutorials with an audience; compiling these tutorials in BlendSpace by topic or on Padlet shelves would be a great way to publish and share them.