Are you looking for a way students can provide evidence that demonstrates their knowledge and show they have mastered a concept? Do you want to shift students from passive consumers of information to creative producers? Maybe you are looking for a tool for EL students and EO students' can use to improve their reading, writing, and speaking skills. If so, Screencastify is the tool for you!
Screencastify is a free digital tool teachers and students can use to record themselves or their device screen and access basic annotation tools. With Screencastify, students can showcase their knowledge in a fun and engaging way through the creation of their own videos. Teachers can view these videos to effectively and efficiently check for understanding.
What does Screencastify look like in the classroom? Now that students have a touch screen Chromebook, they can use Screencastify to record themselves solving a math problem using a digital whiteboard like A Web Whiteboard (AWW) app or using the annotation tools in Screencastify on a blank Google Slide. Through the creation of videos, students can explain how they solved a problem and justify their thinking. Students can also record themselves reading, summarizing or retelling key details of text or recommending a book through a "Reading Rainbow" style commercial. Better yet, students can build tutorials to demonstrate their learning while also teaching other students about a specific topic or concept in any content area. These student videos can be used later by the teacher in a lesson or saved to a classroom knowledge bank for students to access and view.
Yes, K-2 students can use Screencastify too! Check out these Screencastify student examples shared with us from teachers in our district who have their students using Screencastify with Google Slides!
Below is a video of a student using Screencastify to record their voice and screen as they read their E-book they created in Google Slides.
Here is a Screencastify video example made by a first grade class. Students took turns creating a video together as a small group with the support of their teacher modeling how to record with Screencastify. The teacher built an interactive Google Slide template ahead of time with images saved to the background for each slide, sentence frames, and draggable words (text boxes). Students clicked, dragged, and dropped the words (text boxes) into the sentence frames on the Slides. The teacher and students recorded their voice reading the sentences they created.
Below is another Screencasfity example created by a student in the first grade class mentioned in the above example. This student is using Screencastify independently for the first time to retell the key details in a story from the ELA Benchmark curriculum. The teacher created a Google Slides template ahead of time which included screen-prints of the images from the story and sentence frames to help guide the students. This Google Slides template was pushed out in Google classroom as a "view only file" for the students to use while they were recording.
The beauty of Screencastify is that it is not just a tool for students. Teachers can use it to record themselves teaching and to share lessons with a sub, absent or struggling students, and parents. Having the lesson in a video allows the user to pause, rewind, and listen and learn at their own pace.
One benefit of Screencastify is that it integrates with Google Drive and all videos created by students are stored in a single folder in their Drive. These video files and can easily be shared with the teachers through a link in a Google Classroom assignment. For younger students, automatic sharing can be setup where the entire Screencastify folder can be shared once with the teacher. This makes it a lot easier for the student and more convenient for the teacher. (see the helpful video below to setup automatic sharing of Screencastify folders). Lastly, this tool works offline! Students who do not have access to the Internet at home can still create videos!
So why wait to get started? Use this link gg.gg/screen01 to get the extension. You can push this link out to students in Google Classroom for them to install with you. Below are a few helpful videos.
This video will show you how to install the Screencastify extension and setup automatic sharing of Screencastify folders.
This video is an overview of how Screencastify works. NOTE: You will have access to all features with the free version except for the crop and cut/trim features. The premium version of Screencastify is the only version that allows you to do this.
If you would like to share how you are using Screencasity in the classroom with students, feel free to share in a comment below.
Stay Techie,
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