School is underway in most of America now and librarians are busy playing the role of help desk and technology support. I heard from several people this week who are supporting students, teachers, administrators, parents, and even some grandparents along the way. Everyone is chipping in to help students have a successful school year.
I wanted to share some reminders about some things that came up last spring when the coronavirus shut everything down.
Hosting a Story-time Online. School Library Journal came to everyone's rescue last spring and began gathering documentation from publishers who were relaxing their rights and allowing librarians and teachers to share their stories online. They have released a couple of updates over the last couple of months. The publishers and their requirements are all listed here. Please visit this link the next time you are planning an online story event and be sure to follow the guidelines set up for you by the publishers themselves.
Screencasting. You've heard of Zoom and Google Meet. But, have you heard of screencasting? This is something that I use on a weekly basis and sometimes daily. When someone asks me for help, sometimes it easier for me to make them a quick video showing them how to do whatever they asked about. When there is a certain task I get asked about a lot, I create a screencast and save it in YouTube. Then I can share the link anytime someone asks me the same thing again.
Screencasting allows you to create a video that lets the viewer watch what you are
doing on your computer screen. It's similar to idea of sharing your screen live in
Zoom or Google Meet.
My free tool of choice is Screen-cast-o-matic. I like it for a couple of reasons. The
free version limits you to 15 minutes. And this is a good thing! I've seen guidelines
that say people will only watch a video 3-5 minutes. So, if you go for a 30 minute
or hour long tutorial, you will lose people. By using this free 15 minute tool, I
know my videos will not go on for too long.
When it is done, it gives me options for saving it. I can save it to my desktop as
an MP4, AVI, FLV, or GIF. However, my favorite way to save it is to send it straight
to YouTube where I can send a link to the person I made the video for.
There's lot of little tricks I've learned over the years of screencasting. If you're interested, I am hosting a free webinar on screencasting on October 4, 2020 at 4 PM. You can register here and I will send you a calendar invitation with a Zoom link.
Thanks,
Dr. Laura
Did you meet Jessica Fitzpatrick this week? Check out her interview soon!
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