My students in EDU6323 had a blast last week. The focus was on screencasting, and for many, it was the first time they had created and shared a screencast. Based on comments, I suspect it now will not be the last time. Several have already begun incorporating short screencasts into their classrooms or work settings.
To set the stage for this week, I shared Kevin Kelly‘s 2011 talk at NExTWORK:
Kelly, senior editor at Wired magazine, noted that the web has evolved in unexpected ways…and one of them is “screening.” Kelly added five other verbs to demonstrate how the web is evolving:
- Screening
- Interacting
- Sharing
- Flowing (Streaming)
- Accessing (as opposed to Owning)
- Generating
In the five years since Kelly prognosticated the future of the web, much of his insight has proven true. Screencasts fits several of these trends. Screen recording software started being used as early as the mid 1990’s, but the term screencasting was popularized around the same time as podcasting and became a common term for the production of digital recordings of computer screen output accompanied by audio narration. John Udell is largely credited with the development of the screencast as a medium for instruction. His “Heavy metal Umlaut” screencast demonstrating how Wikipedia articles evolve has become a cult classic among screencasters.
This concept of screening is illustrated in Corning’s look to the future in Day Made of Glass Part 1 and Part 2. Kecie added to this with this tweet:
#EDU6323 Technology in Education: A Future Classroom https://t.co/j1E5Z2WuDr via @YouTube
— Kecie Thompson (@kec_thompson) March 4, 2016
By the way, I refound this tweet by using twXplorer from Knight Lab. Searching for “edu6323”, it collated all the links shared this past week by my class in one place. Nice!
Some of the richest discussions concerned the pedagogy behind screencasts. Students shared a video by Salman Khan discussing how screencasts can be an effective way to share ideas, deliver content, and obtain student feedback. Another noted:
“…For more than a century people have been taking pictures, making movies, and distributing their creative efforts to viewers. Today’s camera technology enables students to do the same in the classroom, and in so doing, learn not only academic subject matter but also digital camera technology, which is educationally valuable. Here is a great article about Film can have a leading role in education.”
There was some excellent transfer from Laurie Poklop’s course on How People Learn. Mayer’s Multimedia Principles came up from more than one student.
“…I think you are absolutely on to something by connecting the principles of embodiment and personalization in educational multimedia espoused by Mayer (2014) to the value of human connection in the learning process. While the use of a conversational tone may simply reduce extraneous cognitive load that may occur from attempting to “decode” academic language, I also think that we are hard-wired to respond to human faces and voices, helping us focus our attention in such situations, as our brains are apt to see patterns in terms of human faces in otherwise random patterns (Svoboda, 2007). Additionally, Mayer (2014) interestingly points out that having a static image of a speaker during a multimedia presentation actually does not help learning (p. 9). It is necessary to not only be aware of a human origin for narration, but also it is important to be able to see them behaving in a familiar, naturalistic manner…”
The self-pacing and control aspect of screencasts came up repeatedly. One noted: “…I actually stumbled upon a cool study here when looking for a site to share on Diigo that talks about the pros and cons of screencasting as a self-pacing tool…”
Another conversation revolved around the best length for a screencast. One student shared an article that suggested a two-minute video with one concept is better than a four minute video with two concepts. Others suggested around 6 minutes. TechSmith, maker of SnagIt and Camtasia, asked on Twitter and got a range of responses. Interestingly, the student created screencasts went from under 2 minutes to nearly 20, on the subject of “Favorite Vacation Spot.”
So a good exploration of screencasting. Next week, EDU6323 explores the curation of media, using a variety of tools.