When you are teaching your students software one of the most effective tools at your disposal is screen capture software. Screen capture software allows you to capture the screen activity and make it a video. At a microphone and you have the beginning of a great tutorial. Teaching students (or teachers) how to use software can be frustrating at times. And I’m sure the learners share the experience too. The instructor gets tired of repeating themselves and the learner hates to wait for their questions to be answered. A screen captured video will allow the teacher to keep repeating the instruction and the learner can watch it, pause it, rewind it, etc. until it makes sense to them. By 5th grade students are pretty good with Word and Powerpoint, but graphics software is something that they don’t have much experience with and the tools and techniques associated with graphics software are new and different. I’ve also used screen capture software for some of the online courses I’ve taught on how to use Blackboard.
Techsmith’s Camtasia Studio is perhaps the top rated screen capture software on the market. It retails for close to $300. Fortunately they have educational discounts. Earlier this month TechSmith decided to make v. 3 of Camtasia available for free from their website. Although the current version is v.5, version 3 has all the features a teacher could want. If you would like to teach your kids something on the computer this is a great tool to have.
You could even use this software to help with Math instruction. The Everyday Math program does teach some non-traditional algorithms. Why not use your tablet to record a video of how the different algorithms work. I'm sure the parents would find that helpful.
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/11/22/techsmith-offers-free-camtasia-studio-download/
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