I have always been a huge fan of using technology and digital tools to capture student thinking and help students communicate their great ideas. I previously wrote a post titled, Do Screencasts Have a Place in the Math Classroom? where I pointed out that many teachers seem to like the idea of screencasting but I haven’t really seen it fully implemented in classroom to the extent where students create their own screencasts. I also asked the question Why? Why isn’t screencasting being implemented in the math classroom? Is it too difficult? Too time-consuming? Well today I was able to have some of my questions answered when I worked with a grade 5 teacher that was able to able easily create screencasts with her students using tablet technology.

The students were given a multiplication problem to solve collaboratively in groups and once they solved the problem in more than one way, they were asked to create a screencast of their solution using the Screenchomp app on an iPad.

Here are some of the screencasts that were produced from that lesson:

http://www.screenchomp.com/t/ZgMo18itF

http://www.screenchomp.com/t/K4lEN7EP6cA

After my conversation with the teacher and viewing the student created screencasts, I thought about the implementation issue that I previously raised and realized the benefits of the all-in-one capability and the immediacy that tablets bring to the table.

Creating a screencast that can be shared on-line can be a multi-step process that would turn many teachers away considering the business of day to day classroom learning. Just the step of taking pictures with a digital camera and uploading them to a computer to create screencasts can be annoying. However, the iPad allows students to quickly take pictures of their work with the camera app, easily import the picture into the Screenchomp app, record their explanation and share in a matter of minutes. Rather interrupting their thinking and learning process by going over to the classroom computer or waiting to go to the computer lab to create a screencast, the iPad allows the creation of the screencast to become naturally integrated into the learning process because everything the students need is right at their fingertips on one device.

If you have similar experiences with the integration of table technology in your classroom, I would love to hear about it.