Screencasts, Instagram and Vines, oh my...

I am having too much fun.  I am playing with screencasts and tried out several and looked for ones that were free to use.  I looked in to Jing, Screencast-o-matic, and Adobe Spark.  The first one I used was Screencast-O-Matic.  When you register for it you use it you download it to your desktop or you can use it from the webpage.  It pops up a screen that you can make to the size you want.  It will record for 15 minutes at a time, which is probably plenty for a quick lesson on all kinds of things.  I can really see this being used in a flipped classroom or as a resource to help students (or parents) use databases or searches at home. It puts a little yellow circle around the mouse so you can help show what you are doing on the screen.  I used this to show how to use the card catalog from school.





The next screencast tool I used was Jing.  I used this to show how to make an Adobe Spark.  The downside to Jing is that it is only 5 minutes, so it got to a point I felt like I was rushing.  You can also see that I ran out of time and it cut my video off at the end, but it got the gist across.  Jing downloads to your computer and you again can use it to make a screencast, but you can also use it to do a screenshot.  Each way you can send the link from screencast.com and send things to people. When I downloaded it to my computer it puts a little yellow half sun at the top of my screen and from there I can capture, get my history, or use settings.  There was also a get started slideshow so it was easy to figure out.



From there here is the full Adobe Spark video I made.




Okay, on to some social media.  I set up an new account in Instagram for work/school.  I was able to add it to my current account on my phone so that I can toggle between the two and get notifications on both accounts, private and public.  With Instagram I can foresee using it to create interest in new books or materials in the library or book reviews.  It is mostly pictures with a few words.  Again, I think promoting the account is a priority or no one will know it's there.  My account is readings_my_thing and will be used mostly reading stuff, but also some fun things as well.

Middle school coming to a movie!

A photo posted by Jennifer Hill (@readings_my_thing) on Jun 29, 2016 at 12:10pm PDT

Happy 4th y'all.

A photo posted by Jennifer Hill (@readings_my_thing) on Jul 4, 2016 at 12:19pm PDT

Next I made a Vine account.  It is six seconds of craziness.  Now supposedly they are trying out some longer videos, not sure how long, but six seconds goes by quick.  It was not as intuitive as other apps are and I had to do some googling to find out how to get it to record.  Here is my first attempt. It'll almost make you sick...I could see the green lighting up, but didn't figure out I needed to hold it down to record LOL.




Here is after I figured it out...




I'm not exactly sure how I will use it, however,  there are tons of videos on how to do stop motion or reviews so I will keep thinking and researching and figure it out.