An Epidemic
It has happened to all of us. A teacher explains a digital process and releases students to complete that process. That teacher hopes to follow the explanation with individual or group support of idea development and project refinement, but instead spends the next half hour going to computer after computer and explaining the process again and again. It is necessary but cumbersome work, and it steals precious thinking time from the students and precious breath from the teacher.
A Solution
This dilemma is not exclusive to K12 environments. It happens everywhere. Businessmen present new app functionality in training sessions; employers demonstrate a modified procedure for a specific job function; employees discover an improvement on a job-related method. Each of these professionals becomes a teacher in those moments, and thus each feels the frustration inherent in unending repetition of process steps. So, some tech-savvy thinkers followed the old axiom about finding a need and filling it, their decades-long collaboration resulting in the creation of an intensely useful Web 2.0 functionality: screencasting.
See a need; fill a need. (Make a buck.)
This dilemma is not exclusive to K12 environments. It happens everywhere. Businessmen present new app functionality in training sessions; employers demonstrate a modified procedure for a specific job function; employees discover an improvement on a job-related method. Each of these professionals becomes a teacher in those moments, and thus each feels the frustration inherent in unending repetition of process steps. So, some tech-savvy thinkers followed the old axiom about finding a need and filling it, their decades-long collaboration resulting in the creation of an intensely useful Web 2.0 functionality: screencasting.
See a need; fill a need. (Make a buck.)
It's Cool because It's Simple
Although I tell my students to break a problem down to its simplest form in order to solve it effectively, I forget to follow that advice myself sometimes. Evidence: instead of generating a research topic that is direct and accomplishable in the amount of time I actually have to complete it, I created a research goal that, while important, involves so many different levels of research that the mere thought of whiddling it down to a direct methodology scares me more than this guy does. I have proven quite effective at avoiding avoiding both it and, well, It. (Sorry, but I couldn't help myself .)
Although I tell my students to break a problem down to its simplest form in order to solve it effectively, I forget to follow that advice myself sometimes. Evidence: instead of generating a research topic that is direct and accomplishable in the amount of time I actually have to complete it, I created a research goal that, while important, involves so many different levels of research that the mere thought of whiddling it down to a direct methodology scares me more than this guy does. I have proven quite effective at avoiding avoiding both it and, well, It. (Sorry, but I couldn't help myself .)
Screencasting is a simple tool that resolves a troublesome dilemma much more directly than my research methodology is currently approaching its goal. A screencast is, simply, a video, with accompanying narration, of whatever the screencaster is doing on the computer screen. Using Jing, I created the screencast to the right a (good) bit after midnight last night. The screencast highlights the most effective and engaging vocabulary development tool I have ever found for students or used for myself: Memrise. It was easy to create the screencast, but I did create several bumbling, stuttering versions before finally deciding this version is fluent enough. Staying under the five minute mark was difficult as well, so I'm planning to give SnagIt a try soon. |
It's Useful, too
I often communicate with my boss and tutor clients digitally after teaching them to use Web 2.0 tools specific to their needs but sometimes meet resistance, specifically in interface usage follow-through. The initial hurdle for users of any interface, it seems, is the fear of not being able to figure out how or why to use that interface. Screencasting how-to and why-to tutorials is an effective means of helping my boss and clients overcome that initial fear via tutelage that supplements our face-to-face sessions, allowing them to pause at necessary intervals and to replay instructions at will.
Because I help most of my clients with writing, and because writing well takes a long time, and because writing well hinges on developing a variety of tools to do so, I hope to create writer tool tutorials using screencasts of myself actually manipulating text and explaining when and why to do so. My clients can then practice that same approach when I am not with them, screencasting their own work to send to me for review. In doing so, they would have to think out loud, to verbalize the tool usage, evaluating when it is necessary and how it is effective, and ultimately crafting and refining their content and writing skills through the process.