Video Reflection Made Easy with Recap!

@LisaBerghoff/@Joe_Edtech

More and more, we are asking our students to reflect on their learning. We want them to think about their thinking and we want to know what they are thinking! Having a conversation with each student to hear about their thought process and connections they are making is an unbelievably powerful tool for teachers. Regular conversations are often tricky to schedule, time consuming, and then there is the matter of what the rest of the class is busy doing while you are meeting with each individual student. Many teachers have been dabbling with the idea of video reflection as a means for more frequent formative assessment. Given that each of our students has a chromebook with a webcam, this is a fantastic idea.

I am so excited to introduce you to my new favorite free tech tool, Recap, the free video response and reflection app! This app gives you a secure, and user friendly way to use video in the classroom. It is brought to us by a company called Swivl. They make that amazing Robot camera that moves as you move around the classroom. They completely understand the power of video images for learning.

Recap allows students to respond on video to questions created by their teacher and then it asks them to rate their response. Student responses are recorded privately, within the app, and teachers can then review answers all in one place. This easy to use format gives teachers insights into how individual students are thinking, while also collecting data on the whole class. Since Recap can be used on any device and is so easy to use, it can be utilized for frequent video formative assessments. There are many options for sharing responses so teachers can highlight or share responses with parents, case managers, other teachers, or an entire class.

How it works...

• Teachers assign a question or group of questions to a student, a group of students, or a whole class. The questions can be in text or video format. The teacher can decide how long the student responses can be, the shortest is 30 seconds and the longest is 2 minutes. Students do not have to use the whole time. 

• As students respond, teachers can watch their videos and leave written feedback for them. They can also share responses with other students for peer review, teachers, or parents. 

• Teachers can look at the whole class's data and see how they rated their responses.

Ready to give Recap a try?

Just go to Letsrecap.com and sign in as a teacher. From there, you can have your students create private student accounts or you can use your class pin and add student names. When your students enter your class, they will click on their name. 

When you sign up, you will be given a "demo class" with some student video responses already there for you to try. You can set up assignments and give feedback in your demo class just to try it out and see how it works.

Here is a 2 minute quick start video from Recap:

Recap Quick Start from Swivl on Vimeo.


Are you using video reflection in your classroom? Going to give Recap a try? Feel free to comment below!