Rewindable learning in Action ...

I had one of my senior groups today. It is a mixed level class of NCEA Level 1 and 2.
Some of my Level 2 boys had done DVC last year at Level 1 and some hadn't.

I have put this "portfolio" section on the class Google site, as one of the tabs across the top.

On here, I have made a selection of screen casts that explain a few basic things to do with using their google site as a design portfolio. I did this so that they can remind themselves of how to do things when they forget so they don't feel embarrassed about asking how to do those things all the time. It includes things like embedding objects onto a site etc
Click the link here to check this out.

I showed the boys where this was today and left them to it while I helped the Level 1 group.
They followed the instructions and did the site organisation themselves without any more input about it from me today!! They had to either start a fresh site if they didn't have one or archive their Level 1 work on an existing site to one tab and make it ready for Level 2.

Apparently I sound different on screen cast, so they tell me......

Trying out Screencastify on my Chromebook

One of the good things about Google Plus is that people are always posting interesting, useful things. Today, I read about a really useful Chrome extension called Screencastify. I decided to check this out as a possibility for my students to record the analysis of their design work. We have played with Explain Everything on the iPads in the classroom (blog post here), but I wanted to check out Screencastify as I know they all have access to Chrome on their netbooks and chromebooks.

It was really easy to set up, as it just needed you to click a couple of things to grant access. You decide whether you want to save your work on the hard drive of your machine or your Google drive. Really easy.

I chose to save to my Google Drive. This then makes it simple to embed onto a Google site.
Here is my test that I made today.




Here is where I embedded it onto my sample Level 1 site ...

When we had a go in the lesson with Explain Everything, my students were very shy about the whole thing. Maybe if they have access at home to practicing their audio recordings of their work, they can have a better go as they won't feel the pressure of me wanting it from them within the lesson. They can start again as often as they like and no one will know.

I now need to make sure that structured help is available for them to access at all times, so they feel comfortable about what they are going to say.
This is a much more likely option for students to use out of the classroom as Explain Everything was good and has lots of other functionality, but it involves having a suitable device. I know that all my students have access to this option of Screencastify.
This will also be good for when I want them to talk though techniques that they are learning.

Playing with Screencasting using Snagit on my new Chromebook

I got my new Chromebook today. It is an Acer C720, the new model that the students are getting this year.
I am loving it already. Easy, fast, light weight.
One of the first things I had to try out was screen casting using the Snagit app from the Chrome web store.
I had seen it mentioned on Google Plus, so had to give it a try.

In the Chrome web store, there are two entries for Snagit, an app and and extension. You need to get both of them.

After you have got both of these, open the app and click on the settings wheel. You need to tick the "enable experimental features" option. Once you have done this, the input audio levels bar will be seen and if you make a noise, you will see this pick up the sound.

Now when you open the Snagit app, you will see this box. This will hold all of your screen captures and it has the button to start a new screen cast.

The first time that you do this, it will display a warning box that you need to enable a setting in chrome. It has a link to this so click on through to it. It will take you straight to the settings that need the enable option clicking.
Restart chrome and you are ready to go.
When you click on new screen recording now, it asks to share you screen, so choose yes.
You can then do everything on your screen that you want to record.

This box is down at the bottom left of your screen, and when you are doe, you click on stop.

When you have finished, it will display this box where you can review your recording and see if it is good enough. If you don't like it, just hit the cross to close it and you can start again.

You can also choose a file name here, at the top where the date and time is as a placeholder name.

At the bottom, there is a share option and you get to choose from your Google drive or YouTube account.

Here is a quick one that I made to try it out. This is hosted on YouTube.

Here is a link to a site page where I embedded the video that I had saved into my Google Drive.

On the whole, I found this easy to do and the quality of the output was really good.
I have not tried this on any other device yet, so I don't know if the quality is different then, but I am pleased with the result today.
Very useful......

Making Screen Casts...

I made the How To site a while ago for staff to dip into when they have questions and can't get hold of anyone to help them. It is definitely an ongoing site, with a slow build up of content.
I started on the site by doing lots of screen shots of how to do things and creating step by steps.
Now I am getting more into creating screencasts using Quicktime. There is an extremely handy dandy "new screen recording" option there.

If you don't have the Quicktime version that does this, there is an online programme called Screenr. This is useful, as you can also download the screen cast that you make so you have more control over hosting it.

Recently, after the 2 week break, I have had various staff members wanting refreshers on adding site pages onto the horizontal navigation bar and onto the drop down menus, so I decided to make screen casts to cover these two things. The first one took 3 tries as I hadn't made one for a while and kept starting to talk too early, and stumbling over my words. I got there in the end, but it is weird sitting in an empty quiet classroom, talking to a computer screen!!

Here they are....

Adding a Horizontal Tab

Adding a Drop Down