Wednesday, August 26, 2015

The Worst Screencast Is Better Than The Best Lesson.

What a deliberately inflammatory statement!



THIS GUY IS JUST CAUSING TROUBLE.


But I think you can understand the sentiment.

The worst screencast is always available. It can be paused, re-wound, and fast forwarded. It can be re-watched over and over.

The best lesson happens once. If you blinked - you missed it. If you were sick - or away at a Sport Carnival, or a Music lesson, or Peter-Pan production practise, or Choir group, or whatever innumerable reasons students are not in the classroom - you missed it.

Of course the comment is a bit of an exaggeration. An indecipherable screencast is probably pretty useless to anyone.

But a half-decent screencast? One that can be accessed over and over again - in innumerable ways?

I contend (that as far as content is concerned) the half-decent screencast, beats the PERFECT lesson.

(Of course you can't have a gripping class debate if everyone is watching a screencast separately. So for class debates you might really all need to be there. Unless people watch the content separately, and then debate via on online forum. And furthermore - I have seen some great discussions occur when students who are watching one of my screencasts together, pause the cast, discuss the content, sort something out, and then resume watching the cast. So...that's something to consider.)

I know I have changed 'worst' to 'half-decent'. I have no regrets. I just wanted an eye-grabbing title. I think you probably get what I am trying to say...