Reflection on Cool Tools Screencast Task

GoAnimation

Jing

Screencast.com

Webcam by Logitech

A lot of practice and preliminary takes

In order to complete this task, I had to sign up for GoAnimation, Screencast.com, install Jing and a webcam with microphone and do about 100 takes, it seems.  I think some of my experience was similar to that of a movie or television actor.  So many times when I tried to do my screencast I was interrupted by pop ups.  Also, I learned that if I spoke too soon after launching video capture, my first few words were not captured.  I also found that learning a new program can be difficult because there were no directions foe GoAnimation.  None of its tutorials specifically explained how to start a new cartoon.  I finally discovered that there are two ways and they are easy.  I was lucky with the timing of the assignment because Staples had a webcam that interfaced well with my operating system on sale for $20.  And, it had a built in mic.  During the process of doing all of this I also signed up for and downloaded Skype and I learned a little Prezi because I was lucky enough to be on a team in EDUC 337 with Tara Gillette who helped us learn it for a class assignment.  Although not directly related, I also installed Smart Notebook and it really slows down my computer.   In fact, at one time my computer made me wait while it reconfigured because I had run out of memory while capturing video.  I might need to use my wife’s newer machine for the podcast assignment because it has more memory space.  I spent about 30 actual hours doing all of this.  I used a significant part of that time discovering how to get into the Go Animate studio where cartoons are made( I used my screecast to train Marcia Roelke, a HS teacher in biology, to use GoAnimate and she was making her own cartoons within the hour proving that a little help learning the tool increases efficiency), and I spent a lot of time (about 10 hours) making the screencast because I had to do so many takes.  I finally accepted the post you see here but I intend to add Camicast so that I can learn to edit and improve my screencast. All in all, I did make my first little cartoon and my first screencast.  Since then I have made additional screencasts to add content to other reports.  Specifically, I made a screencast that briefly reviewed an online textbook and inserted it into a text analysis for a Science unit plan that I constructed for an assignment in Dr. Cook's EDUC337 course.

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b>GoAnimate.com: Cool Moms by mkjohnson

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Cool Moms

I also had students at A-F HS use the IWB and GoAnimate to make cartoons in class.  I have a suggestion for GoAnimate.  Set it up so that teachers can get all of the black characters off the system.  My white biggoted students immediately found the black character and started making racist cartoons.

 Screencast of GoAnimate

Classroom Uses

During the tenure of my effort it the obvious applications came to mind.  Simply, I can use the free version of GoAnimate to highlight the content I am teaching  However,  even better, students will have a ball using the program to create cartoons using the academic content I am helping them learn. In fact, Marcia Roelke and I will be teaching high school students to use GoAnimate and they will create cartoons relative to their own research on biomes in North America. Considering my potential uses of screencasts, I have 2 categories in mind.

First, I remember watching Michelle Johnson leaning over another teacher’s desk while Michelle was teaching her how to make a class WIKI.  Michelle has tried to help several other teachers do this.  If she had a screencast to share with all of the faculty, it would save her a lot of time.  I can envision showing my colleagues how to do a number of class projects by making screencasts, and I can envision making screencasts quite often to help students learn a variety of tasks from making calculations to performing laboratory tasks.  Can you imagine how much more efficient students would be (and safer) working in laboratories after they watched a screencast or podcast that demonstrated their hands on lab before their hands were actually on it.  I bet students would enjoy helping to edit the screencasts, especially if videos were embedded in them in which they were the stars posted on You Tube?

Yeah!

Second, I would use screencasts that I could archive for substitutes to use.  Then , I would not be totally absent, students would know they are responsible for the content and life would be better for all, especially for the substitute teacher.  Say, how about a scrrecast to train substitutes?  Cool!

Also, during the process, I watched the 20/20 show on the YouTube Generation.  It, of course, gave me ideas because it got me thinking about how I could also get rich by posting good stuff on YouTube.  Why not?

20/20 Friday Nights

While I was working on the IWB project I wanted to have students find photos or videos of animals in different biomes around the world and maybe climate events too.  Then, I realized that most short videos are on YouTube and most schools block this.  Then, I got an idea.  I wondered if I could play the video, use jing to capture it, send it to screencast.com and recover it in a classroom for students to see even if they could not do it from school themselves.

Video of Gobi desert from YouTube.       Ha! Ha!