As the snow comes piling down on brandon and manitoba in general, I find myself cooped up inside (after a nice snowy run outside, of course), I find myself going through my classmate's blogs and reflecting on how lucky I am to have had a chance to meet and learn from all these amazing people. I'm so lucky to be in #eci831 with Alec Couros (find his webpage here) and a very diverse and intelligent group of teachers and others involved in education! For example, Ms. Moffatt has a very detailed post on the nature of knowledge today, and in particular I really enjoyed the chart on some popular epistemological perspectives that are relevant today. I could literally feature everybody's blog here, but one more that I'd like to highlight is Altan's recent blog post on the quandaries of knowledge explosion. A very detailed breakdown of the various schools of knowledge is presented as they progress, ending with our current so called "digital age" and social learning. The discussion presented for thought is great, and makes me want to stop searching Google, and just staying on Blog Hub in our eci831 course! I wish I could add more! So here's my quick review of Screencast-O-matic, a screen recording tool that is not new for me but is new for many of my students, who are creating tutorials for each unit we complete in Grade 11 Computer Science. The students are writing scripts, making story boards, creating examples to use in their tutorials, coding them, and putting it all together. They will also critique one of their peers' videos while in the editing stage so that the suggestions can be added to the video. To cap it off, it seems like every parent will sign off on the waiver form, so we will be uploading the resulting videos to YouTube for public viewing. Here is a quick video review of Screencast-O-matic below: If you didn't feel like watching the 2 minute video above (yikes, it's hard to compete with those 10 second tik tok videos) I'll quickly summarize: I like Screencast-O-matic for a few reasons: 1) the watermark on the free version is not intrusive 2) it is super easy to use 3) you can record the screen and also the webcam at the same time 4) it's easy to select the screen area you'd like to record 5) You can upload directly to YouTube if you like to live on the edge or you can save the video for later editing Really, how could we complain? It's a great, free, educational tool that empowers teachers and students. Using the built in video editor in Windows or Macs, you can really step it up to the next level. I've started using it to record any demos I do in my computer science classes, this way my students (or perhaps other people out there on YouTubes) can use them whenever they need a refresher or need to learn something new. What an amazing time we live in. I feel like I've been taking all our Ed Tech for granted the last few years, but really being in this class is helping me be amazed every day what just how much is possible today. I'm going to link to an interesting post that features 92 EdTech tools. Can you envision using any of these in your own classrooms? Till next time, stay curious, and have fun! Matteo PS A special thank you to Kurt Campos, a student of mine who is clearly very talented, and created the logos for my blog at the top of every page!! Thanks Kurt :D
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10/14/2019 04:49:32 pm
Hey Matteo! I am curious to know if you have used Screencastify before and how it would compare to Screencast-O-Matic? You've piqued my interest in Screencast-O-Matic so I am also wondering how long you think it would take for a "tech dinosaur" such as myself to become proficient!
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AuthorMy name is Matteo Di Muro, the original Prairie Boy, and I've been teaching since I was 14. I currently teach mathematics and computer science in Brandon. I try to keep on learning things, and I'm getting onboard with sharing with others, hence this site! Archives
March 2020
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