How Can Teachers Use It?
As with most teaching tools, the success of using Screencastify in a classroom depends on how well teachers harness its potential to match their particular needs. There's a significant amount of support and lots of suggestions for use on the web, both on the developer's own site and through independent reviews and YouTube videos. Teachers may want to explore some of that support to help with their brainstorming for how best to use Screencastify in their classrooms.
There are creative uses for both teachers and kids: Teachers can record themselves to create a flipped classroom, explain difficult concepts, demonstrate an idea, or give kids audio feedback on their work. Kids can use Screencastify to demonstrate what they've learned or how they solved a problem, give presentations, make and read ebooks, or practice reading aloud in a foreign-language class.
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What's It Like?
Screencastify is an extension for the Chrome web browser or Chrome devices that records your screen, voice, and more. Both the Chrome browser and the Screencastify extension are free downloads available for all operating systems. To use Screencastify, find its icon in the browser's toolbar and choose among the recording options. Record what you're doing on a single tab in your web browser, record all activity on your screen, or add a video insert to include video of yourself using your webcam. While recording, use the drawing tool to write directly on the screen or the spotlight tool to highlight certain sections.
Completed videos are saved locally in your Screencastify account and can be uploaded to your Google Drive account or YouTube or downloaded to your computer. The free version allows up to 50 recordings, each up to 10 minutes long, per month. The premium paid version has unlimited recording and includes post-recording video-editing tools.
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Is It Good For Learning?
Screencastify makes screen recording easily accessible for teachers and kids alike. The available tools, recording options, and functionality strike a nice balance between giving options but not going overboard and being confusing. And, as it's a browser extension, so long as users can download Chrome, Screencastify works seamlessly while navigating the web or the computer.
Though the free version does come with some limitations, it still offers enough to make simple short recordings. And if users want to do some post-recording editing -- such as crop portions of the video -- there are other video-editing tools they could use. For light use, teachers can certainly get away with sticking to the basic, free download. However, teachers who foresee making lots of videos or assigning kids to make their own videos may want to look into the premium or organization account options. With this versatile tool, the possibilities for making screen recordings useful for learning are limited mainly by the creativity of the user.
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The extension icon appears on Chrome's toolbar; click it to choose what kind of recording to start and adjust settings.
While recording, users can draw or highlight parts of the screen.
The premium version offers a few post-production editing tools such as cropping.
Once saved in your account, videos can be shared via Google Drive or YouTube, and users can adjust privacy settings.
Check out the various resources with advice on how to use screen recordings in your classroom, including this list from the developer.
