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Screencast-O-Matic: Transforming the Classroom Experience through Video
Matt Champagne, COO and AJ Gregory, Founder & CTOFlipped Learning, a concept where a student consumes video outside the classroom and then discusses the subject during class, is now becoming mainstream. Realizing its importance, educators are expanding the use of video for situational training such as mock interviewing, video collaboration, and more. Video is becoming so pervasive in learning scenarios that it now needs to be viewed as a utility for learning and communication, just like presentation tools such as PowerPoint or Google Slides. However, to make video a true utility for educators and students requires solutions that have minimal investment, being simple to acquire and get started. This is where Screencast-O-Matic makes an impact. The company provides instructors, students, and staff with intuitive, easy-to-use, and cost-effective solutions for creating, managing, and sharing videos.
AJ Gregory, Founder and CTO of Screencast-O-Matic mentions that the emerging trend of a two-way communication model between teachers and students is shunning the long-established ‘instructor-led’ pedagogy, and strengthening the need for knowledge-sharing toolsets. Screencast-O-Matic addresses these requirements with its flagship platform that fulfills the video learning needs with tools for video creation and editing, robust content management, and video sharing.
If video is to be ubiquitous in learning, video tools need to be integrated into the greater learning toolset and also provide choice to the teacher and student. One example of this is Screencast-O-Matic’s implementation of IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI), a standard that prescribes a way to easily connect learning applications and tools with platforms like learning management systems (LMS). Another example is convenient publishing options to popular cloud services such as YouTube and Dropbox or access to an API for universities and school districts to integrate with their private cloud storage.
Screencast-O-Matic makes an impact by providing instructors with easy-to-use and cost-effective solutions for creating, managing, and sharing videos
Screencast-O-Matic offers tools and services for video creation, video transformation, and sharing. Starting with video creation is an intuitive Screen Recorder—a component of the platform—that allows users to capture any area of their screen and record the webcam including picture-in-picture and simultaneously, add text annotations, shapes, and free-hand drawing. The user can also mix video created from other devices or recordings and add in other audio, including narration imported from a colleague or voice-over service. With a built-in speech detection feature, editors can even add automatically generated video captions when publishing the video. “The final video can either use one-click publishing to our hosting services at Screencast-O-Matic.com or their existing hosting options to make it available to students,” says Matt Champagne, COO of Screencast-O-Matic.
The success of Screencast-O-Matic’s toolsets can be further elaborated through the research conducted by Martin Mehl, Sr. Lecturer, Communications Studies and Dr. Luanne Fose, Lead Instructional Designer at California Polytechnic State University. The goal of the research was to integrate effective digital mentorship through screencasting assessment to optimize knowledge transfer and ensure learner’s awareness. The research revealed improved student attentiveness, leading to 5-10 percent rise in students’ grades and overall improvement in teacher-student communication using this methodology.
While Screencast-O-Matic is currently used across K-12 and higher education across more than 170 countries, creating over 30,000 videos each day, it’s also being used by small businesses and enterprises for workforce training, product demos and marketing, social knowledge sharing, and more.
As a part of the growth strategy, Screencast-O-Matic further intends to explore the possibilities of their unique solution outside pure learning scenarios and to develop more localized solutions. The company is also committed to bringing more ground-breaking innovations and features to ramp up the visual learning pedagogy.
