Screencast: Educating and Engaging

My presentation was on the screencast. Screencasting has become common place in educational environments in the last 5 years. Screencasts present a wonderful opportunity for educators from all sectors whether primary, secondary, higher, or workforce training to provide rich, engaging learning experiences. The beauty of the screencast is the ease at which they can be created with very little technical training or expertise. There are many free screencasting tools that provide professional, appealing and effective learning opportunities. The presentation opened with the definition of screencasting and a brief history. Since screencasting lends itself to versatility of learning content and mediums to present at least five of the instructional strategies supported by screencasts where described. Based on the learning strategies presented each was further developed in the section termed Applications. Although apparently the advantages of screencasting far outweigh the disadvantages, screencasting is not a prefect tool for every learning situation. As a result some of the advantages and disadvantages where presented. And finally, because the Screencast has educational applications in so many areas I thought it appropriate to illustrate a few I found either extremely effective, functional or intriguing. Two of the pieces of information about screencasting that where not covered in the presentation where the countless numbers of proprietary, free and open source screencasting products that are available for educators of all walks. These tools provide to ability to robust and engaging learning for any environment be it face-to-face, blended or distance education. The other stone left unturned was the endless sources of ready for deploy screencast that have been developed by fellow educators and available for use. In the event that any one of these multitudes of screencasts does not fit the specific learning objectives than one can be developed following a simple set of best practice guidelines.

References: Friedman, J. (n.d.). Common Elements of Effective Screencasts Page 1 of 7. Xchanges. Retrieved September 19, 2013, from http://infohost.nmt.edu/~xchanges/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=149&Itemid=180 Ruffini, M. (n.d.). Screencasting to Engage Learning (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu. EDUCAUSEreview online. Retrieved September 26, 2013, from http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/screencasting-engage-learning Sugar, W., Brown, A., & Luterbach, K. (2010). Examining the anatomy of a screencast: Uncovering common elements and instructional strategies. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 11(3), 120. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/851