A Great Option for Screencasting and Flipping Hislish: Google Hangouts on Air

I have been searching all summer for the most efficient screencasting tool to help me begin creating history flip lessons in Hislish.  I viewed podcasts and read blog posts.  I perused multiple reviews of apps and websites that provide screencasting ability and function.  Snagit and Screencastify were just a few of those services that I investigated.

Throughout my research, I repeatedly ran into people commenting that Google Hangouts on Air provided an excellent opportunity for screencasting that immediately uploaded to Youtube upon completion of the Hangout.  I finally decided to dive into this Google Hangout on Air mess a little further.  I viewed Youtube tutorials on how to actually create one and once again read reviews on the internet.  I struggled to find cons and "knocks" on usage of it, so I chose to take the plunge and give Google Hangouts on Air a test drive.

On my first test drive (yes, there were many test drives!), I was just blown away by the whole process of setting up the Hangout.  When I started the Hangout, a prompt appeared asking me to name the Hangout and to choose whether it would be public on Youtube or if I wanted to limit access to just specific people. No way in heck did I want this sucker becoming public!  This was going to be a test run Hangout and it was my very first one ever, so I just chose to share it with myself.  The Hangout window then appeared and another prompt appeared asking if I wanted to invite anyone to attend the Hangout.  At this point, I was confused.  Hadn't I just invited people to my Hangout on the previous prompt/window? So, I invited my daughter and I invited myself (I soon figured out doing this was a big mistake for multiple reasons).  Because I invited myself, I was then required to accept the invitation I sent and then the Hangout went live.

I was now confronted with a series of icons on the left hand side of the Hangout screen and I began running my mouse over each of them to see the options I had.  There was a control room, a q&a option, chat, toolbox, apps, Google Effects, and screenshare.  It was that screenshare button that caught my eye because I knew that might be my ticket to screencasting.  So, I clicked on the screenshare button and a window popped up on my screen showing me several different views I could choose.  I had no idea which one to click on so I just picked one.  It gave me a picture within a picture within a picture.  It was absolutely crazy!!!!!!!  I did not even know how to get back to my Hangout on Air after clicking this button!!!  It was at this point that I knew I was in too deep and I needed to halt this trial run and learn more about screenshare on a Google Hangout on Air.

Youtube became my best friend at this point.  Thanks to Alice Keeler and a few other tutorial videos, I finally realized how to correctly use the screenshare button.  Now, I will admit that this was a lengthy process that required about 3 more Google Hangout on Air test runs.  After all of that research and several trial runs, I finally felt confident about using Google Hangouts on Air as a tool in creating flip lessons.

What I loved most in all of my trial runs is that the upload of Hangout to Youtube was immediate.  The minute I clicked a button to end my Hangout broadcast, the broadcast video was sent to Youtube.  There was no need to convert the video or to open Youtube and then upload the video.  Another option I liked was the ability to post the Youtube link of my Hangout on Air on a website.  Students could then click on this link at the time of the actual live broadcast and they could view the Hangout while I taped it and they could also participate in the Hangout through the chat feature.

Here are some other options available that I think we should investigate for future use in Hislish:

1. Another great option about Hangouts on Air is you can invite people to join and actual participate in a discussion with you.  It is just like holding a video chat. So, when you invite someone to your Hangout, you are inviting the to actual be visible on the broadcast and comment and participate in discussion with you.  This got me thinking, could Mrs. Minton and I doing a Hangout on Air together and help present information to the student in this way?

2. Then I began wondering if this would be a great opportunity for our students? Would it be possible to have our students do their own Google Hangout on Air as an assignment????  Of course, then I wondered if our students had access to Google Hangouts on Air on their school gmail account.  There is always a wrinkle somewhere........

Micnote App for Chromebook: Could We Use This For Student Responses/Opinions in Hislish?

Today I am testing out the Micnote Chromebook App to see if we can use it in Hislish. Our possible goal with this app is to have students provide reflections or opinions of essential questions, current events, On This Day in History for the week,etc.  In the long term, we would like to then move our students towards podcasting on a weekly or monthly basis.  Students could pick their own podcasting topic as long as the topic was related to something taught/studied in Hislish class.

Personally, I became interested in pursuing this idea of having students produce audio comments after doing the Hislish Yearbook assignment for the last two years. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to students voicing their own opinion and actually hearing it from their own lips, so to speak.  I also enjoy having students produce their own audio comments because it forces them to once again work on verbalizing their thoughts, which I believe students do not do very much with the advent of texting on cell phones.  Students struggle to speak out loud and voice their thoughts.  I also like the idea of audio comments because it maybe causes less anxiety than actually standing up and speaking in front of the class.  Some of our students are more introverted.  This option of audio comments might help these students to ease into the concept of verbalizing their thoughts.

Micnote is an app for use on Chromebook that allows students to make a quick audio comment, save it as an MP3 file, and then students also have option of immediately syncing that file with their Google Drive.  I love this option because students can immediately click a button and have that audio file go to their drive and then they can share that audio file with us, the teachers.  Students struggle with conversions of files and uploading, so the fact that they can get it to their drive with one click is a HUGE plus for us in Hislish.
Hislish students are on their drive and in their email on a daily basis for our class, so having this option is essential to ease of use and success of this possible assignment.

Now, I am further interested in seeing if the audio file can be inserted into a blog post on a student blog.  This would then allow students to add written comments and images to complement their audio comments and help complete their opinion or reflection. So, I am now going to see if I can insert my test audio comment that I made on Micnote earlier today.  I had it sent to my Google Drive and now I am going to post it to this post to see how easily I can complete the task.

Note: I attempted to upload the audio file from my drive to this blog post.  I walked away and came back in 5 minutes and still it was not uploaded to the blog.  So, uploading it to a student blog will probably not be an option.