Mark Sobkowicz

Screencasting and Video Podcasting are ways to deliver content to students using the internet. You make and record a short (mine are 3-10 mins) lesson, and provide it to students as a podcast. This means they can 'subscribe' to the podcast using iTunes, which most students already use. I use these podcasts in several ways.

In my AP Physics class, I noticed that as a test approached, students often needed more help than I had time to give. And the night before the test, when they were at their most receptive (or most deperate) they did not have access to my help. I decided to provide them with new problems to try, along with videos of me solving those problems. I experimented with several ways of making videos and settled on making actual videos of me solving problems on a large piece of paper with a marker. Below is a picture of my dining room set up for making a video. You can see some of these video podcasts here. You will get the real experience if you subscribe in iTunes. Its easy to delete the podcast when you're done.

In my programming class, students create a final project and often need a good bit of help with various parts of it. I've been learning alot of programming myself, and the best way I've found to learn is through screencasts. A screencast is a video of the teacher's computer screen, along with a recording of the teacher's voice explaining what he or she is doing. There are several software applications for making screencasts. The one I use is called Screenflow, and it costs money. I don't know of a good free solution for this. You can see the podcast I've make for Intro to Programming here. The image below is not a movie!

Once you have the movies for your podcast, you still need to get them up on the web. I've used two different methods for this. The first is iWeb, which is part of Apple's iLife software suite. I made the physics podcast with that, and published it on Mobile Me, though you can publish it on any server.

The screencast site I made with Podcastgenerator, which is free but requires some knowledge of and ability to install things on a server.