Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

The launch of Vimeo Record earlier this week made me think that perhaps it was time to write a comparison of popular screencasting / screen recording tools. For this comparison I selected the five options that pop into my head whenever I'm asked about screencasting (which has been almost daily since March). With the exception of Flipgrid all of the tools in this comparison have free and paid options. This comparison only addresses the features that are available to educators for free. If you'd like to see the comparisons in a chart format, I have embedded a chart at the end of this post (if you're reading this in email or RSS you'll need to click through to the website to see the chart). 

Jing is a great tool for adding basic visual elements to all of your online conversations. Sign up for your free account!

First, I want to acknowledge what an uncertain time this is. As many of our jobs are shifting to virtual settings, I want to share tools that may be useful as you create online resources to provide information and work virtually with colleagues.

All of these resources have free options.

Sometimes it’s just quicker and easier to show someone an idea or concept rather than try to say it to them. Other situations demand that you present an idea in multiple formats.

I know when I was in school (back in ancient, rotary-phone days), it would have been really helpful if my teacher could have sent me home with a recording of exactly how she tackled the example calculus problem. 

Do you need an effective way to help keep your focus on your work? Unplug from the internet. You know it works.

But first, you’ll need to set up your computer with a few essential tools that will help you get a big chunk of your work done offline. Let’s round up 10 potential ones for you.

Loom is a free screencasting tool that works in the Chrome web browser. In addition to using it on a Chromebook, you can use Loom on a Mac or Windows computer as long as use the Chrome browser. Loom will let you create a recording of anything on your computer's screen. There's also

One way to boost your distance teaching during (and post) this pandemic is through  creating and sharing screencasts and instruction videos with your students. In today's post we are sharing with you some of our favourite Chrome applications that you can use to record your screen and create instructional video materials to share with your students or embed in your virtual class..

Quick Capture is a great Chrome extension you can use to take screenshots of your current page. We have been experimenting with it for awhile now and we found it way better than the other tools we have been using (Lightshot and Monosnap). One particular feature we like the most about this app is full-page screen capture. With a single click, Quick Capture generates a screenshot of the whole page. It also offers a wide variety of tools to annotate and edit your screenshots. You can add text, shapes, arrows, edit using a pencil or brush, crop specific parts, add emojis and many more.

Screencastify is a tremendously popular screencast recording tool. A large part of its popularity comes from being easy to use on Chromebooks. In fact, last fall I helped eighth grade students use Screencastify in conjunction with Brush Ninja on their Chromebooks to make simple animated videos. As great as it was Screencastify wasn't without limitations.

Extensions for Google Chrome can do all kinds of helpful things for you and your students. This is the time of year when teachers who have Chromebooks for the first time ask me what they should add in addition to the standard things that their IT staff installed. Usually my suggestions begin with a few Chrome apps and some extensions. Here are five Chrome extensions that I frequently recommend to teachers.

Easy and free screen recorder for Mac, Windows, and Chromebooks. Record your camera and screen with audio directly from your Chrome browser and share the video with your team, friends, and family.

There are 6 screen capture and screencasting tools on the list in 2017 – to capture screenshots and screen animation This table shows their positions on the main list and the 3 sub-lists. Cha…

Video lessons are instructional videos created through a screen casting or video software. The nature of a video lesson differs according to the purpose for which it is created; it can be an explanatory video, a step by step tutorial, a review, a demo, a recorded video presentation and many more. Video lessons are ideal for flipped classroom and can be incorporated in pretty much any learning situation. There is a wide variety of web tools out there that can help you create beautiful video lessons without the need of any advanced video software knowledge.