After two weeks of long weekends and no Monday classes in session, we were back in the classroom! While Michael wasn’t here, we had Rich McCue leading our class through some very relevant, hands on and informative activities and discussions. Rich brought a great perspective on technology in the classroom and technology education as a whole as he has also taught EDCI classes here at the University. Rich shared different types of media used in a classroom including videos, slideshows, read along stories and explained multi media learning theory.

He really went in depth with explaining how to make and use videos effectively. Something that surprised me was that he said when there’s text on the screen during a video, it becomes a distraction and doesn’t help the student. I feel like most educational videos I’ve personally watched had an element of text on the screen at all times. It makes sense that it’s a distraction as the viewer is focused on reading the text, not the video itself. The same idea goes for having a small corner frame of someone talking in a video, such as a screencast. We learned how to use this tool as a recourse for future lessons. It was difficult at first to get everyone on the same page with the process of downloading the extension as people were on different devices, Chromebook, MAC, iPad etc. but once this was overcome the process was not too challenging. We were instructed to create a video with the screencast tool and record our screen while we demonstrated the use of a website/game. I chose to do Water Boy and Lava Girl which is a game I played in my childhood. The screencast extension records my screen and also records my audio of me talking.

https://youtu.be/R9shX3CusGk

This would be extremely helpful when creating lessons as it could be a tool to create instructional videos for students to watch at home for extra support. I’m really glad Rich showed us this resource and I hope to continue using it and growing more confident in my abilities to use it in the classroom!