Sunday, November 18, 2012

Screencasts and Prezi

During the year I have created a whole heap of screencasts for my students.  I put them on edmodo and it has become an important part of my teaching method.

I have wanted a way to organise them so that students can easily find the one that they want as scrolling back through the year is not very practical..  One of the science teachers at the school showed me prezi and I thought it might be useful as a graphic organiser.

If the loading process wasn't so prone to failure, I'd say it was a great product.  It's come a long way since I last used it, but ready for mission critical work I'd say not.  It's a frustrating tool to say the least.

A couple of things I learned during my prezi journey.

1. Be prepared to reload the edit page 10-15 times before the prezi loads successfully in edit mode.
2. Keep the prezi size down and don't overuse the zoom function (make things too small or too big)
3. It only works with IOS 5 on an iPad (and to update to IOS 5 requires a rebuild of the iPad resulting in data loss when the restore fails due to antivirus being overzealous.. grr..)
4. The save to file function in prezi is a lifesaver.  Any time that you want to display a prezi in front of people (eg in front of a class), save it to a file - don't rely on it online, it will fail on you every time - even if it worked perfectly when you tested it two minutes before.
5. Get your login validated as an education user.  It's worth the extra functionality.

Anyhow.. the important bit. It's nearing christmas so I thought I'd share my prezi of screencasts created during 2012 for 3AB MAT and 3AB MAS.

http://prezi.com/9irnyg-v83ul/screencasts/

Be prepared to reload the page up to 10 times before the prezi loads successfully (it may repeatedly error - don't worry there's probably nothing wrong).  It's annoying but worth the wait to see how we could present information in the future.

Please remember that each screencast was created in about 5 minutes each in response to student questions - they are not meant to be a comprehensive examination of each topic.  In many cases they are not sequential with the Saddler text.  They are only meant to supplement class teaching (and are a part of my reflecting on my own teaching practices).

I know at least one of the screencasts in particular is full of mistakes (I must have been asleep that day!).  A great part of the screencasts is when students find errors or query against their understanding - it's a real indication they are watching for context rather than just accepting everything in front of them and a part of why I believe they have been successful.

The sound volume is low because I'm doing these when the little ones are asleep at night.  If anyone is interested in how to do a screencast (it's stupidly easy), reply below and I'll write a little tutorial.

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