Cool Tool Alert -- Screencast App on Chromebooks

 Would you be interested in a way to create a video of a lesson you teach for kids to view when they're absent or to be able to review if they need? What about an easy way to create a flipped lesson? Or a way for kids to do a quick and easy demonstration of their understanding for you on a topic? What if this video also automatically generated a transcript that you can edit? Well, your wish has come true!

Here's the icon
for the Screencast
app on the
Chromebook.

Meet the Screencast app on the Chromebook! Literally, with the click of your mouse, you can create a screencast (with your beautiful face on or off camera) and a transcript that you can edit (remove text, correct text, annotate text -- please note, in the video demo below, I misspoke and said you can translate the transcript into another language. Sorry if that's something you wanted and I just dashed your hopes. If you DO need this, let me know and I will find a way for you to do this -- like a copy/paste into a Google Doc and then create a translation). 

When you open the Screencast app, you'll see this:

Here's what the icons mean in the toolbar:

1: Record full screen
2: Record partial screen
3: Record window

Click on the settings icon to turn off the camera if you don't want yourself in the little circle in the video.

Here's a Screencast video with the transcript where I talk about this app (this is also where I misspeak about translating the transcript, just as a reminder). Screencast recordings live in the Screencast app as well as your Google Drive! If you share a screencast from the app, your only choice will be to share it within CSD 17. However, if you share it from Drive, you can set it so anyone with the link can view it. The link from the Screencast app has the transcript. The link from Google Drive does not.

I would LOVE to help you learn this application and find ways for you AND your students to use it! Let me know if you want some help and I'll come on over and walk you through it -- plus you'll get a gun sticker for using one of the Cool Tools I feature!