Microsoft Screencast

We received mostly positive reviews on our screencast with a few critiques that had some valid points. One of the critiques was that we should have rehearsed more before doing the actual recording so as to avoid any slip ups and stumbles. I know we had to start over a few times to get it right since the program does not allow for any editing after the fact. The other critique that we received was about our selection for our advanced topics. For the most part people liked what we picked, but there were a few who thought that the techniques that we picked were still a little basic and could have found some other topics to have done out advanced techniques on.

I did find the other screencasts to be helpful. In the screencast on using Word, I learned how to be able to track any editing changes that I might make to a paper and insert notes. This was not something that I knew about prior to seeing this demonstrated and is something that might be extremely useful to know. As for the screencast on Power Point, I found the entire thing to be very helpful. I have not used Power Point much and I have yet to use it since the newer version as been released. I found it very useful to learn how to access all the functions since they seem to have been moved around. Power Point is definitely something that I can see myself using in my classroom because it is a very powerful tool to help direct the main teaching points of the lesson.

I think all students could benefit from screencasts because a screencast can be used to demonstrate just about any technique that is done on a computer and does not have to be limited to Microsoft Office. In my classroom I could incorporate screencasts into my biology labs where I show students how to use a particular piece of software, such as Excel, to format and analyze data that they had collected. By doing this, they can view the screencast outside of the classroom which would leave more time for me to cover other topics. Another advantage to the screencast would be that students could go back and review a screencast for a technique they may have forgotten about.