Welcome to the World of Interactive Videos

My week 3 blog post

Today we learned about Screencastify – which is a chrome extension which allows you to take a recording of your laptop, iPad, or monitor screen and turn it into an interactive video. I think these interactive videos could be deemed very useful in a classroom, especially with the older kids who may not find the use technology a challenge. Of course we also must be aware of the students who may not have access to technology outside of school and how the implementation of interactive videos will affect ALL families in our schools – not just the majority.

I think interactive videos could be a useful tool while using a flipped classroom teaching model because it keeps the students engaged in the video lessons done at home. I think the flipped classroom approach is a great method to use in higher level courses where it is more beneficial for the teacher to be present for the application to help when students get stuck on a question or mix up two concepts. My grade 12 Chemistry class followed a flipped classroom approach and personally, I loved it and genuinely believe I did better in the course because of it. The main flaw is that it is hard to track how engaged the students are while watching the at home videos – or even watching them at all. The use of interactive videos would enforce that the students take the video lectures as seriously as they would an in person lecture. It also acts as a diagnostic assessment of the students general understanding of the content they are expected to know when they enter the class.