Students in Mrs. Jedrzejowski’s Spanish classes at O. L. Smith this semester have been using Chromebooks and the Screencastify extension for Google Chrome to record their conversations with their peers.
Students are first given their task and are then invited to find a spot somewhere in the common areas of the school in which to set up their mini-studio and begin working. At this point, students begin scripting and rehearsing their conversations. When ready, students record their conversations.
The Screencastify extension allows students to begin recording their videos using the Chromebook webcam and saves the video right to the students’ Google Drive. From there, Mrs. Jedrzejowski’s submit their best draft via Google Classroom.
Google Classroom then allows Mrs. Jedrzejowski to view student work and give feedback directly to students. It also allows Mrs. J to easily select videos to display for class viewing.
This is a great example of how a teacher uses technology to provide students opportunities they would not have had without the technology: instead of simply having students face their fears and stand in front of the class to act out a skit, or randomly selecting students to converse in class, students had the opportunity to create, polish, edit, and self-evaluate their work before turning in their best work. Moreover, students had the freedom to adjust their learning space to fit their needs, while each student could, at least for a few seconds, be the “star of the show” on their own terms.
Here’s a sample of what they produced: