Zombies and Wizards
I was really nervous at the thought of creating a screencast! I think my primary fear is listening to a recording of my voice … Oh how we can sound different on the phone, it’s like our voice gets altered as it goes through electronic wavelengths!
Personal fears aside, I see so many benefits and opportunities with creating and presenting screencasts for classroom instruction. Most students are supported by visual clues, more than simply audio instructions. Okay sure, the debate on the 3 different learning styles (visual, audio and kinetic) has kind of been debunked, but I am a firm believer in this powerful quote
“A picture is worth a thousand words”
Frederick R. Barnard
Students are increasingly being introduced to computers and tablets in the classroom. I am a graduate from the francophone school district, where every primary student gets access to a tablet and the high schoolers get a laptop…. Since substituting, I have seen a whole lot.
I’ve encountered students in grade four who are unable to use the keyboard to type up a story, students who are unaware of how to use the search bar, and most unfortunate, students that are so attached to the screen they have a hard time putting them away at the end of the lesson…
They remind me of zoooommbiies.
My most recent experience was in a grade 8 class, where students did not know how to access an attachment that came with an email… There is an assumption that students are part of a computer wizard generation for they have been surrounded by technology their whole lives, but I would argue that there are far more clueless than we think… Sorry, clueless sounds rude. I don’t think it’s entirely their fault.
Scratch, GIMP, Comic book creators, Freshgrade, Magicavoxel… there are countless applications students can use in the classroom in an effort to demonstrate their learning. While these are fun and dandy, it is our role as teachers to implicitly direct students around these tools and applications. Screencasting is a powerful and efficient way to share the necessary steps for meaningful engagement in learning.
I love the weather and I love cartography. I was introduced to this interactive website during my geography degree, and I often visit it when a storm is brewing. In a classroom setting, this website could be used to explore weather patterns and meteorological phenomena around the world. It is a great educational resource with many applications!
On Facebook, they have many time-lapse videos of their explorations! (Fires, storms, updates!
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