Students and Teachers as Makers: Apps to Present and Share Lessons and Learnings (Part 2)

In Part I of this post, I introduce the web-based application Present.me as a potential tool for you and your students to create video presentations, tutorials, and lessons.
Two additional tools my students and I enjoy are ScreenChomp and Screen-cast-omatic.
ScreenChomp (available in iTunes) is-in essence- a white board that you can record. Teachers utilize ScreenChomp to record their drawings, diagrams, or text on a whiteboard or customizable background with audio explanation and guidance. You can pause the video, insert photos and PDFs, change the background, erase, and then publish as a link or save to your account to share with students. Want to be really efficient with your time? Connect your iPad to a project with AirPlay mirroring through an Apple TV or a VGA adapter so you can record the demonstration or lesson while you are teaching face-to-face. Then, post the link of the ScreenChomp for students to review.
Check out the developer Tech Smith’s website for an overview of features.
Ideas for students:
- Demonstrate a process with a “think-aloud” like solving a math problem or conjugating a certain type of verb in a language class.
- Respond to a picture or prompt by annotating and talking about their responses.
- Crate a video lesson for their classmates on a focused topic or skill like mitosis vs. meiosis or allusions in literature.
Screen-cast-o-matic is a free web-based tool you can use to screen capture your desktop on a PC or Mac. Click on the screen recorder button on the website and a dotted-line box appears that you can re-size to create a record window on your screen. This is my go-to tool to create quick tutorials for technology topics ranging from citing sources in databases to creating a Google Doc. The free version does limit the recording time, but in general tutorials are under five minutes, so I haven’t had a problem there.