Screencast Tool

I hate doing it because there has to be away but I give up. Spent way to long trying to embed my screencast onto my blog. I originally started by trying to do a podcast but did not like it for this assignment so I changed to the screencast. The week and entire course is quickly coming to a close and I must move on so that I can complete the big project. The funny thing is that my screencast is about putting in the Creative Commons license on your blog. As well, I have not had any difficulty getting other images to embed. Eventually I have to push back, laugh and move on, if I don't, the computer would end up out the window floating away on Lake Huron. I am sure that in some cases, like this one, I have discovered and learned more from the struggle than I did from the actual process of creating the screencast. While I reflect on this and figure out how to embed a screencast I will discover the lesson. For now, this too will have to wait. Please see the link attached. I at least got that correct.

http://screencast.com/t/qEylzShw

When I first started to look at these sharing tools I thought that there was no place for them in my Personal Learning Environment. I viewed these tools as ones that I would only use to communicate with the World or my students as an instructor. This to me looked more like the reverse video that has been showing up in several classrooms, and would make great ones. The instructor logs in, creates either a podcast or screencast on a subject and then posts it within the walled garden of the Learning Management System for the students to view. This becomes a great tool for instructors to help students figure out complex principles or may even allow them to cover a subject the entire class did poorly on in a test.

While I had all these wonderful ideas floating in my head as I explored both of these tools, it dawned on me that others would have the same idea as well. Why spend my time creating new podcast on a subject when there must be someone out there doing it already. Why not search and subscribe to these. The information then, just like my feeder, comes to me. If I find great podcast, I can then share these with other students.

The screencast tool really spoke to me. I totally enjoyed the process and believe that this tool used correctly in a classroom or learning situation will help students grow and learn. A screencast will allow students to be both the teacher and the learner at the same time. If a student asks another one for help and the second student creates a screencast to walk them through the problem, the second student has actually become the teacher. This process makes the student to move the information into a different part of the brain and they will actually retain the information much longer. There is a better chance for real learning and discovery when this occurs. Used at it was here in this course, we all became teachers for these short little video's. I am sure we choose things that would be easy for each one of us to do our assignment on as that is human nature. While I was doing mine I know that I did learn a lot more about Creative Commons.

This was an excellent project that I really enjoyed (I was only kidding about my computer going for a swim) even if I could not get the video to embed. I totally now believe that both of these can be in my PLE as collaboration tools or for collecting information or better yet as pieces to assignments that I will be completing in the future.

Jeff