The New and Improved

Screencastify!

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

I asked my students a few weeks ago what they thought were the biggest positives that came out of the pandemic. Some ended up getting dogs, and others got to spend more time with family. One student mentioned she really got to know more about her grandmother through weekly Zoom sessions. So there were some background positive externalities that came of all of this. The pandemic forced us all to embrace the "new normal" which gave us all an opportunity to think about how we could enhance our curriculum and teaching styles for the better. 

Screencastify certainly comes to mind as a pandemic addition that's here to stay. Since last year, Screencastify has added some neat features and tricks that we will now jump into:

Interactive Questions

Now, this may be stepping on EdPuzzle's toes here a little bit, but Screencastify has introduced a new feature to allow users to embed interactive questions that will pause your video with recordable questions/answers. Question data allows you to see how individual students did on specific questions or more global data on the class as a whole. After recording your video, there is a new option on the right-hand side of Screencastify that allows you to add questions:

Analytics

While not groundbreaking, Screencastify did add an analytics option that gives you simple data on unique views and viewers via their Watch Page. You will be able to see which students watched your video, and how many times they did.

AppSmashing and Sharing

Screencastifty also updated their sharing capacity - directly from your video page you can share the link, generate a QR code, or even export directly to apps like EdPuzzle:

They've also made it much easier to export the original video file! I feel like plenty of Screencastify users don't quite know where their video goes once it's made, or how to then share that video to be watched. Luckily they've compiled all options neatly on the bottom right-hand corner. You can directly export to YouTube (my personal favorite), your Google Drive account, or download the video directly to your personal hard drive. 

Video Editing

The most impressive thing Screencastify has done is simplify the video editing process so that anyone with an internet connection can create professional-looking videos. No one's saying that it's here to replace iMovie, but not everyone has an expensive Mac device. With their web-based editing format, you can cut and splice, crop portions of your screen, zoom in and out, blur out text or even add text.

So if you're still creating Screencastify videos in 2021, please check out their new features! Let us know if you have any creative ways of leveraging screen casting in your curriculum!