Digital Badge 3: Critical Review of My Learning

Admittedly, I had no prior experience in screencasting before undertaking this assignment, so using Screencastomatic opened up my eyes to a whole new realm of possibilities. I was pleasantly surprised, like my peers, at how straightforward this process, including the uploading and editing in Youtube, was. I was impressed by how simply adding narration and background music could transform a simple screencast into such an appealing resource. Indeed, research has shown that many features associated with the video format positively affect our ability to encode and retrieve information, particularly in the case of dual encoding, whereby information that is encoded both visually and verbally is better remembered (Thornton & Kaya, 2013).

Crucially, this new learning has come at an extremely opportune time for me: as a primary school teacher, I have been very suddenly faced with the task of teaching remotely during our current Covid-19 crisis. Being equipped with an understanding of screencasting has helped me hugely in meeting this challenge, and I am now regularly creating video tutorials for my students to aid them in their learning. The audio-visual explanations are incredibly effective. As Nguyen outlines in his post, ‘Benefits of screencasting for teachers and pupils’ (2018), there are a multitude of advantages associated with this online-learning resource. I also personally like that I can maintain an element of verbal communication and connection with my students.

While I was surprised to learn through peer-review that I may be among the few for whom screencasting was hitherto completely novel, I am confident that I am now able to competently apply my new knowledge and facilitate multi-sensory online learning in a relevant and effective way.

References:

Thornton, D., Kaya, E. (2013). All the world wide web’s a stage: Improving students’ information skills with dramatic video tutorials. Aslib Proceedings, 65 (1), 73-87. https://doi-org.ucd.idm.oclc.org/10.1108/00012531311297195

Nguyen, V.A. (2018, November 5). Benefits of screencasting for teachers and students. Retrieved from https://atomisystems.com/screencasting/benefits-screencasting-for-teachers-and-students/