Screencast-O Matic...Playing With Multimodal Tutorials - UNH EDU 722 Week 3 Reflection

This week I developed a multimodal tutorial in response to teacher requests.  The teachers asked for support in navigating a district web site to assist them with instructional planning.

As I began to design this project I realized that there were 2 major aspects of learning that I needed to experience.  One aspect was involved with understanding the format and functionality of the web application that I presenting (ie Schoolnet).  The other area of learning involved with the features and functionality of Screencast-O-Matic.

As is often the case, once I began the project journey it took me much longer than I had expected.  I think that is something I need to build into my personal time management in the future,,,I will call it "expected normal play time".  I have learned many lessons this week and I look forward to learning many more int he future.

So here is the video, I will reflect on more lessons learned after you view it.
Accessing Standards Mastery in NHPS Schoolnet  (Please note that I may have more editing to do before going "public" due to permissions and figuring how to respect them.)

From the presentation or "content" end, I practiced presenting the steps involved in accessing this particular report about 9 times before I got the clip to be what I considered concise.  The variables I played with were the depth of understanding which I wanted the audience to gain and the length of the video.  I started with a 6.43 minute video and cut it down to 2,53 minutes.  Since many people feel that the topic is very "dry" I decided that short and sweet would have more appeal.

Most of the learning I dd this week was about Screencast-O-Matic.  I watched several of the online tutorials on Screencast-O-Matic to learn about various editing features.  I purchased the pro version because I saw that that version might have use for me in the future

After about 5 initial tries I thought I had a decent tutorial.  As I was doing my final preview I realized that student names needed to somehow be blocked out.  So, over the course of a few more sittings with this project I  was learning about overlay features,  Then I realized that I might need to get teacher permission for when their name pops up on a drop down menu.

I will continue to refine my skills with Screencast-O-Matic.  I see many possibilities to use this tool in the future as a staff developer.