For this activity, I decided to look for resources about screencasting from sources I hadn’t used before.
At Merlot I found text and a video about Jing… in Serbian. It was tagged English as well as Serbian, but I couldn’t spot the English version, if there was one. Would the results have been more useful with a different topic? I’m not sure.
Next, I visited iTunesU, as I’ve only dipped into it as a learner and not thought about using any resources there for teaching / supporting staff. I was surprised to find a Course (Screencasting with the iPad), 13 Episodes and a fair few Collections. On closer inspection, the majority were unrated and appeared to be aimed at US school teaching.
In answer to (some of) the questions for “If you only do one thing…”, I don’t think I did find a relevant resource, without spending significantly more time reviewing the iTunes U episodes. If I were going to use a resource during a session or link to it in Blackboard, I would certainly watch it all the way through, but there were no clear winners in the results that made me want to view them immediately. Would I have found something potentially more useful via Google or YouTube? Possibly, but that’ll have to wait for another day.
Perhaps I should have chosen a more obvious topic. I don’t think my intended audience (academics) would warm to some of the iTunes U resources, for example, a video about how an American High School Math (sic) teacher uses screencasts. iTunes U was perhaps more useful, as it returned more results, but if I had chosen a different topic, I might think differently.
Blended Learning Facilitator / Lecturer at London Met