Many of my teaching goals this year revolve around math instruction. One of the items on my list was finding a more effective way to communicate math strategies to parents. I’ve given them print outs with examples, but I wanted to be able to show them our problem solving strategies in action.
Enter the awesome Chrome extension: Screencastify.
Screencastify is a Chrome extension that allows you to record your computer screen. Because everything I do on my SMART Board shows up on my computer screen, I am able to work out problems on the SMART Board and easily record them for parents. I did purchase a rather fancy microphone that was recommended by our tech guy at school. I plan on using the microphone for a few other projects, so I splurged. However, you can get some good deals on microphones here.
The first thing you need to do is go to the Chrome store and download the free extension. You can do that by clicking here, and then click “Add to Chrome”. Once you do that, you will see the Screencastify extension icon appear at the top of your extension bar (upper left of your screen).
Now you are ready to start recording. Just click on the icon. You will be prompted to grant access to your camera and microphone. A folder, labeled Screencastify, will automatically be set up in your Google Drive. All of your recordings will automatically be saved there. Then, just click on the icon again, and click on “Record Desktop”.
As you can see from the picture above, I selected to show the preview window. If you look two pictures down on this post, you can see the preview window show up. If you do not want this to show as you are recording, deselect this box.
A pop up box will show up shortly after you click on “Record Desktop”. Once you click on “Share”, you will hear a three second timer. After that, you can start recording.
When you are done recording, click Stop Sharing. Screencastify will automatically show you the recording. If you don’t like it, click on the trash icon. Otherwise, it will automatically be saved to your drive in the Screencastify folder.
If you’d like to see an example, here is the video I recorded for my parents on how to solve words problems with an unknown start.
I am very excited about the possibilities with this extension. I plan on sharing a few videos with parents in every math unit. Beyond that, I’d like to create videos for future tech ideas that I share here on this blog.
Do you have a favorite Chrome extension? I’d love to know what it is!
Thank you!
