Screencasts

Screencasts! What once started out as a fear of hearing my voice and seeing myself on video has turned into a love of the digital educational platform screencasts! I initially had to start, restart and redo but after practicing with it enough times, I have become much more comfortable creating screencasts and editing the videos.

Reasons to Use Screencasts

There are a number of reasons that screencasts are ideal for use in digital education and should be used within the school library.
Professional Development: creating tutorials for teachers allows them to work at their own pace or attend the "class" when it is most convenient. Uploading these screencasts to a YouTube channel or Google Drive for access at anytime is definitely helpful when new teachers are looking for answers or when a user forgets how to complete a task. 
Student lessons: tutorials for searching the OPAC, accessing the online databases, and searching the available online resources.
Blended learning: allowing students to see and hear book trailers of new books that have just arrived to campus and then letting students create their own videos to share with the campus.
Parent communication: sending out videos to parents or posting them in a newsletter would allow them to see what is happening in the library and give them ways to help their child at home when accessing resources. 

Screencast Options

I have tried a few different programs to create screencasts but I have settled on a subscription to Screencastify. I don't know that is my FAVORITE but I do like that it is an easy program to navigate and the extension added to the toolbar allows for a quick video. My current account with Screencastify is with their $24 yearly subscription. Features included with this account are full-screen or just a single window recording, embedding the webcam anywhere in the screen, narrating with the microphone, and recording even without internet connection. There are annotation tools and variety of ways to save the recording. It can be uploaded to YouTube, Google Drive or downloaded for a shareable link.

Screencast-o-matic is another great program with exceptional features. This program integrates with other educational platforms that schools are already using, such as Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology, and Microsoft Teams. They offer a free version along with the Deluxe account that is less than $20/year and the Premier account is $48/year. Tons of features including a music library, video editing, and collaboration tools are all available depending on the account. I will definitely consider moving to a Screencast-o-matic account because of the additional features. 

Creating Meaningful Infographics

I have always been a visual learner and became an immediate "infographic fan" when they became popular a few years ago. I like to write in bullet points instead of paragraphs and I like to draw pictures to represent words so this tool for information is the best of both worlds. I have a subscription to Canva and have found that for most purposes it has been a great resource for infographic templates and tools. Trying my hand at a few new web applications to create an infographic gave me a chance to see if there is something out there that is better than Canva. However, I must say that I am a creature of habit and like to stay in my comfort zone so there was a learning curve when I was trying to work through the websites. Here is my take on the three sites that offer free subscriptions for creating infographics. 

Piktochart: Out of the three sites, this one was my favorite. Maybe because it most closely resembled Canva?! Infographics, Presentations, Posters, Reports, Flyers, and Social Media posts are all available on the left side menu. In addition, there is a collaboration tool for a Team Template for collaboration. The free version of Piktochart does not allow this team option and some of the graphics, photos, and options are limited. In addition, the free version only allows 5 saved visuals. Downloading the visual as .png is the only option unless you level up to a paid version.

Infogram: This site has a ton of options for interactive charts, graphs, presentations and infographics. As with other sites, it offers more when you upgrade to a paid subscription. Downloading images for sharing and uploading to documents is not available for the free option. It is extremely user friendly and has great themes and layouts. Users at any level of technology knowledge should be comfortable with the site.

Easel.ly: Was very easy to use and tour the features when creating infographics. This site includes webinars and tutorials to help users create high quality documents. Like the other sites, a paid version gives you access to more features and collaborative options. Also, the site offers designers to create your product if you desire a professional touch. One plus is that Easel.ly integrates with Google classroom. This would be a great feature for schools that use Google. 

I created this infographic using Piktochart after I chose an appropriate template. Replacing the words with information from the article and using my own charts and images, I was able to create a visual that is informative with attractive visuals. (It is difficult to see the text in the infographic when downloaded as a single png so I also downloaded each individual block of the infographic to be able to see the information as single images.)