A "Digital Hallway" Project
Displaying a student’s work can give the student a real sense of accomplishment and allows others to see what has been accomplished throughout the school year. But what if the tradition of work-in-the-hallway went digital – into an online space where students could easily display their work, teachers could evaluate it, and parents would come to view and comment?
Screencast.com allows you to set up a folder where any sort of content can be added such as images, videos, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and more. The Screencast.com folder provides a safe, no advertisements atmosphere with a range of privacy settings to ensure only those you want can see the content.
Here’s an example of how Screencast.com might be used as a Digital Hallway project.
- The first thing you’ll need to do is sign up for an account on Screencast.com. Anyone can get a free account which provides you with 2 GB of storage and 2 GB of bandwidth per month. What does that mean? It should be more than enough to get you started. The Screencast.com Pro account gives you more space and allows you to customize the look and feel (template) of your folders.
- Next, create a folder that will store the student work. Click the Create Folder button and give it a good title and description.
- Next decide on the folder’s privacy level. Realistically you’re probably going to pick either Public or Password. Even though Public makes it sound like anyone in the world could see the student work, just people that have the URL to the folder will see its contents. For example, a link to a folder might be like this: http://www.screencast.com/t/VCWsWZOp. This folder would not show up in a web browser search, so someone would have to string together a nonsense combination of letters (in the correct upper or lower case) and numbers to see the content. For added security you can specify a password to access the folder. In this case, parents and students would have to know the URL and the password to see the content. Learn more about privacy settings.
- The next step is the hardest. You have to get your students to create brilliant and exceptional work! Once that’s done there are two ways you can put their content into your folder. One is by going into the folder then clicking Upload Content. A more efficient way—especially if you’re managing a ton of content, is to download the Screencast.com Desktop Uploader.
- Once the student work is uploaded, decide if you would like others to be able to download and/or comment on the content? Click Edit next to, or under the thumbnail for the content and check the options as desired.
- The last step is to share the folder. Click Share next to (Details view) or under (Tile view) the folder.
- Next, click the URL in the field as shown below. Press Ctrl + C, or right-click and select Copy to copy the URL to your Clipboard.
- Paste the URL into a newsletter, email or on your class website/blog. You might be thinking that it will be challenging if people have to type the URL in by hand. There are a couple things you can try. First, specify the difference between capital “i” and lowercase “L”. They look virtually identical. If you want to try customizing the URL, you can paste the link into a service like www.tinyurl.com and they allow you to choose a name as long as it’s not already taken.
All of TechSmith’s products support direct uploading to Screencast.com. It’s a great way to share images and videos (and other content) with others!
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