Screencasting

Screencasting seems to be a very powerful tool that works great as a presentation option, especially with tutorials. As an elementary art teacher, I'm not sure I would use screencasting much due to the limited time I have with the kids. Unless I took the students to the computer lab, only a couple kids could use the computer each class period, and if there were even 3 students that used the computer each week, it would be months before the whole class was able to try a program. With that said, I do see how screencasting can be an effective tool to teach someone how to use a computer program or application. If I had set up a tutorial on how to use the program TUX paint, students could watch the tutorial and hopefully start using the program without much help from me. This is probably the only situation that I would use a screencast for elementary art.

However, in the upper level art classes, students often learn how to use Photoshop. I think screencasting is an excellent way to have a resource available at all times. Again, screencasting would be used in a sort of tutorial sense. Having screencast tutorials for all computer programs and applications would be useful, especially at the high school level where students are really getting into the finer details of programs like Microsoft Office or Photoshop. This makes it easier for the teacher since they obviously can't help every student one-on-one. I am looking forward to seeing others idea's in how to use screencasting in the classroom, because I feel that it is a great tool, but would be best suited for a computer/technology classroom.