Tube-d!

I just completed my very first video for my sixth graders!  Even after a couple of times starting, stopping, and restarting the recording, it is still akin to a "rough draft" but very usable nevertheless.  There was a point after the first stoppage of recording that I reminded myself that I would be doing this quite regularly and that good had to be good enough.  I am sure that I will get better and more efficient.  I really don't want to spend my time on perfecting the recording, but rather on laying out what happens the next day in class; that's where the proverbial "rubber meets the road."

I am currently using Screencast-o-Matic.com for my screencasts.  It's free! It allows me to not only record what I am doing on the screen using ActivInspire, but also synchronously records me through the built in iSight camera on my Macbook.  In my research on flipping a classroom, I learned that a presentation can lose up to 50% of its impact without the presenter being in the video itself.

I created a YouTube channel and SchoolTube channel to which I will upload my videos.  My first video can be found on my YouTube channel -- check it out.  I am still in the process of putting the same video on my SchoolTube account.  Why the two accounts?  Parents of sixth graders in an elementary school.  Some parents may not like their child getting on YouTube.  Although it is more convenient to upload videos to YouTube, it's not any more difficult to upload them to SchoolTube as well.