Creating Video Resources for Students

A colleague of mine tipped me off to a great tool called Screencast-O-Matic

Screencast-O-Matic is a no-hassle, online tool you can use to quickly create instructional videos for your students. I've been using it to create video solutions to some of my test questions. I open my calculator's emulator software and a copy of the test in OneNote side by side and Screencast-O-Matic will record the audio and video of my solution as I go through the problem.

Layout of a Math Problem Video Solution

What Screencast-O-Matic is doing is just creating a video of whatever is on my screen. You could use it to create videos of any digital content in your classroom. In my math class, I'd like to use it to build up a bank of example questions that students can refer to at home. Some of my colleagues have been getting their students to create instructional videos of their own.

What I love about Screencast-O-Matic as opposed to other similar software is:

1. It's free to create videos shorter than 15 minutes
2. You don't have to mess around with complicated settings like video codecs. You just click record and go.
3. There's a cursor highlight feature so that your students can follow your pen like the bouncing ball in a sing along as you show working or operate the calculator

At some point, I may find that I need some more advanced features found in programs like Camtasia, but for the time-being Screencast-O-Matic is the right balance of simplicity and features for my needs.