Community Clips for Written Feedback

Do you ever have students ask questions, questions, questions, when they receive a writing back?  I've always found that giving constructive feedback for my students has been a balancing act: Try to give them as much information as I can about the writing and yet not spend half an hour a paper.

Solution? Record yourself looking at a student's paper.

So in conjunction with the macros I have set up on my Word (go here if you would like to do it for yourself), I decided to try using a screen-cast, something that records my computer screen and voice, as I look over a paper.

The Idea

While you are giving feedback, however you give feedback, record the paper and your voice.  This way you can show they what is wrong and how to fix it while you are doing it.  You then make the video available to the students.  They can go over and fix their mistakes at their own speed.

This can not only save you class time by not having to spend as much time assisting individual students, but also the students can watch the video as much as they need to make the corrections.

You can do this in conjunction with how you already give feedback.

How to

Set Up

Set up a way for students to send you their written work.  You can use something as easy as email for this.  This is a perfect time to use Edmodo however.  It is a great tool and really easy to use.  You also don't have to worry about organizing things, searching through your email, or even giving away anything personal.

Get a Program

Download something to do a screen-cast.  I like CommunityClips.  It is easy, it does everything I want, and it does it for free.  There are others though, such as ScreenCast-o-Matic, though it leaves a watermark.

Record

While you look at the writing from the student, record yourself speaking the comments and how to fix it (or whatever you like to do).  Try to to have too much dead sound while you are doing it.  I try to read the paper out loud to them if I found myself silent for a time.  Community Clips (and I assume others) has a pause button, so you can take breaks or give yourself time to think.

Send back

Email or upload back to the students.  With Edmodo, this is super slick.  You can create an assignment and send it back to them really easily.  Other options would be to put on Youtube or some other share site.  The disadvantage here is that anyone can see it.

If you can think of any other good vessels of delivery, please write a comment!

Example

If you would like to set up the buttons (macros which make the grammar comments without me having to type it in), read this older post.

What would you do?

What do you think? Are you scared about the amount of work it would take? What kind of variations would you make?  Make a comment!

Screen-Cast

Do you have Power Points or other presentations you are proud of? Why not record yourself talking while showing what is on the screen? This way, students can move at their own pace.

Following up the ideas from the last post about flipping the classroom, this week I've added a screen-cast.

The Idea

Record a lecture for students to watch at home.  Have them show what they learned be producing notes or an assignment from the listening.  Practice in class.

Why and what?

Why do it? It is fun! It's a different format for students.  They can do it at their own pace.  Here is a closer look on why, it's a page that my teacher, Dr. Wilson created.

What to do? Anything that may benefit your students. Last post, there was a flow chart to assist.

How to do it

There are lots of programs that can record your computer screen along with your voice.

Community clips (google it)
Screencast-O-Matic
Quick Time Pro
and many more

I really liked Community Clips and found it really easy, though I am sure Quick Time has better editing.

1. Download Community clips
2. Prepare your lecture
3. Click record
4. Save the file
5. Upload it to Youtube or whatever site you would like

Community Clips has a nice walkthrough as well.  I felt like it was pretty user friendly and the video files quite managable.

Example

Here is a screen-cast I made about either or.



In class the next day, I check their notes and do some example exercises.  I also have them do this Polleverywhere.com survey so that I can check their answers as they come in.

What about you?

Have a video you would like to share? Anything else that could be done with Screen-Casts? Let me know what you think!