screencastomatic – Jake Miller

Screencast-O-Matic Adds Interactive Video Questions and Polls

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We know Screen-Pal, formerly Screencast-O-Matic, as a screen recording program. However, they also have added in interactive video quizzes and polls. They’re kind of doing the Edpuzzle thing within their own tool. We saw Screencastify do this about a year ago.

Screen-Pal has jumped on board and added this interactive element into their videos. It’s not available on all Screen-Pal accounts, which is not surprising, but it was also a little bit disappointing to hear that it’s only on the solo max EDU plans and the team EDU plans.

So if you’re paying, or your school is paying for a Screen-Pal account, you have this upgrade. If your school is not paying or you’re not

Screenshot shows the new layout of video options for Screen-Pal.

paying, if you’re on a free version, you don’t have this. So an option would be for you to record and pop it into Edpuzzle. As the image shows, there are some different options as you play the video.

It shows where the questions are
we could have multiple choice questions,
text-based questions,
and rating questions that use hearts, cool, huh?
We can also see what it would look like on a phone, it shows the video behind the question and kind of blurs out the video a little bit, or puts a kind of overlay on it. You can see the question without losing the video and not having to share the screen between the two things.

There are 5 question types:

Multiple choice
True or false
Short answer and
Poll, which I assume is an upgraded version of multiple choice, something that Ed Puzzle doesn’t have. Ed Puzzle has multiple choice, but you can’t have it be an ungraded multiple choice question.
Finally rating, which I assume is what those five hearts on the previous screen were for. I wonder if you could change them to stars or something else. I’ll be curious to see when I get to try it out.

Next, and this is directly from the blog, because I was worried I wouldn’t remember all this:

You can randomize the order of answers, so when going through the video, different kids will see the answers in a different order. This will avoid student honesty issues, and perhaps student cheating.
You can set it so students can’t skip questions, or you can allow that. Sometimes I like to allow skipping because it lets the kids jump over certain parts of the video. Conversely, there are times when I don’t want them to jump over part of the video.
You are able to set it so students are receiving automatic feedback on the correct response.
You can capture additional open-ended answers, meaning I assume multiple answers.
And then, of course, the important part, you could view individual and aggregate data for all those quizzes. For every quiz you can view aggregated data and then you can export this data into a grade book for further analysis. I normally find it’s quicker for me to just type it and just put two tabs on my screen and type from one to the other. But if you’ve got a really big class, you’d be able to export the info and put that into your grade book.

As always, let me know what you think!

📺 Check this out in video form on TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. 📺

[ Image(s) Source:screencast-o-matic.com/blog/new-interactive-video-quizzes-education/

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Record your screen anywhere, with Chrome Extension ScreenPal

There’s a new free tool for video comments and video emails…

Screencast-o-matic recently announced a new Chrome Extension called ScreenPal, and it may just be a perfect addition to your edtech toolbox!

It is FREE, it lets you record your screen or webcam (or both) for up to 5 minutes, and it lets you do it from just about anywhere on the web.

You might be thinking, Jake, that sounds kinda like regular Screencast-o-matic or, for that matter, Screencastify or Loom. What’s different, though, is that it’s built to work in comment boxes and text boxes.

In those boxes, you’ll see a tiny ScreenPal button—Grammarly users will be reminded of the Grammarly button. Anyhow, you click the button, select screen, webcam, or both, and then press record. You then preview the video to trim or crop it, and finally, insert that recording into the text box or comment box you were in.

I can’t believe that you can actually crop the video in this simple little tool!

Want to give a student feedback? Click the extension and pop it right into the comment box in Google Docs, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, or whatever LMS you use. Now, it won’t work IN your Google Doc or Google Slides, for example, but it’ll work in the comments within those platforms. It also works in tweets within your email window so that you can explain with video (when you don’t feel like typing). You can access all of your recordings, too, which means you can reuse them later if needed!

The only issue I see (so far) is that if you have both Mote and ScreenPal running, the buttons are on top of each other in some platforms—I’m going to send them that feedback.

Otherwise, this looks like a great tool.

And, elephant in the room, this tool is really similar to Mote – the major difference, of course, is audio vs. video. But, as I always say, there’s not one right tool for every person, or every situation. This one is definitely worth checking out.

BTW, if you have Screencast-o-matic Premium you’ll also be able to edit those ScreenPal videos later within the Screencast-o-matic site. I should note – since the videos are stored on their server, you’ll want to look into how that fits with your privacy and data regulations in your school.

[Image Source: https://screencast-o-matic.com/screenpal]

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#EduDuctTape Episode 32!

In the 9th episode of Season 2, I talk with Sethi De Clercq of eduflip.net about effectively sharing new technology information with teachers, using video in the classroom and tools for students to create video with. We talk about EdPuzzle, screencasting tools (Nimbus & Loom), Flipgrid, Explain Everything, Backchannel Chats and more!

#EduDuctTape Episode 31!

In the 8th episode of Season 2, I talk with Jornea Armant of Flipgrid about video creation tools and connecting students with the entire learning community. We discuss Flipgrid, WeVideo, Seesaw, Adobe Spark, screencasting tools and more. Also, in my Soapbox Moment, what we do when a tech tool goes away.

15+ Tools for Student Voice

In episode 28 of the Educational Duct Tape Podcast, Mike Mohammad joined me for a chit-chat. One of the topics that we discussed was student voice. I posed the question, “How can educators provide opportunities for student voice?”

Mike promptly made the distinction between student voice and student choice. While both are powerful things to leverage in the classroom, they are very different (though we often lump them together, as Mike pointed out).

I think that educators’ definitions for the term student voice are inconsistent – some seem to believe that it simply means
– hearing each student’s answer or thinking
– while others believe that it means empowering the students to have a voice in some (or all!) aspects of their education.

Mike made it clear in his response that he subscribes to the 2nd “definition” of student voice. His response fits with the description that Edutopia uses: student voice involves letting “students’ input and expertise … help shape their classroom, their school, and ultimately their own learning and growth.”

I definitely believe that that is the type of student voice that we want to strive for. In a recent #EduDuctTape chat, educators shared their favorite tool for empowering student voice. It’s important to note that simply using the tool doesn’t provide opportunity for or empowerment of student voice. It’s all about how you use it.

Here are some of their responses:

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