Wednesday, 29 March 2017
Screencastify! (Leading digital learning)
After Anne's visit a few weeks ago, and my reflection that I wasn't using as many digital tools as I used to, I really wanted to start introducing more digital tools to my students. After all I am an MDTA in a 1:1 environment, I should be using digital tools..
I really wanted to expand the DLO options for my students, and as I knew that other Manaiakalani schools use Screencastify, I wanted to use it as well. I asked our Manaiakalani facilitator to unblock this Chrome extension and it took a few weeks to get it all sorted, but its here!
I introduced it first to my own class.
Click here to read my blog post about it on my class blog.
It was fairly easy to introduce, the students understood it very quickly and were able to use it confidently pretty much straight away. Awesome!
They were so excited to have something they had never had before - using Google Docs/Drawings etc can get a bit tedious if that is all you are doing..
(Click link above to watch my students first attempts at screencastify)
Today I went to my neighbouring class (Room 8 ) and showed them how to download it, set it up and use it as well. It went great!
Read their class blog post here.
(Photo credit: Ottilie Morrison).
I repeated the lesson again a third time for room 6, my other neighbouring class who are year 4 students. They got it straight away as well. It is such an easy to use tool!
What I really loved was seeing this comment from yet another teacher in my school...
(Comment was posted onto my class blog post)
Miss Kyla teaches year 7&8s at my school and I was so flattered that she was even looking at my class blog, let alone using it for her own teaching. She told me later on that she had showed her class my blog post, they had watched the students screencastifys and then they had copied what my students had done.
Originally I wanted to use screencastify so the students had more options to use when they created DLOs and so I had another way to collect evidence of their learning.
However it turned into a big thing that now everyone is using (and all the kids are so excited to use it!!).
I am proud that I was able to plant this seed and hopefully in the future I can help lead digital learning in the same way (or better!).