Screencast-o-matic

Screencasts are powerful ways to share information with students using multimodal tools. Many times a video in which the teacher or instructor directs the student through a series of tasks is much more powerful than a list of textual directions. Screen captures (images) offer a simple way to print up, or embed images onto a worksheet, website, wiki, etc. To capture and annotate your own screen captures, take a look at Skitch.

Sometimes the best course of action is to develop to produce a quick 3-5 minute video explaining exactly what you want students to do. The tool that I have been using lately to capture, produce, and share these screencasts is Screencast-o-matic. S-o-m is a free tool that runs in your browser, and utilizes java. What you need to know about this is that it usually just works...and you don't need to install anything. S-o-m will also allow you to trim your clip, add several more advanced editing options, and upload/download the file when completed. I pay for the Pro version which eliminates the watermark on the video. I also do this to support the developers.

I previously used Jing, and still do recommend it...but I've switched over to S-o-m once Jing eliminated their Pro version.

There are many other ways to use screencasts in your classroom and in research. Please review the following webpage for more ideas.

Here is one example of using Screencast-o-matic to walk teachers through how to use a district data base to form instructional groups. Accessing Standards Mastery Reports on NHPS Schoolnet