Brave to speak English in front of camera with Screencast-O-matic

When I was in Paris, I saw one little Korean girl who was recording her vlog in English under the foot of Eiffel Tower. She used her Gopro to shoot herself and told her feeling about Paris, about the scene here. I was impressed that the girl was so confident though there were so many people nearby. 

I asked myself, could I have this courage and confidence to speak English in front of the camera with people walking around? No, though I know how to make videos, I still feel uncomfortable when I faced the camera. For students in China, most of the students even don't have time to learn how to make videos.

So today's recommendation: Screencast-O-matic, is one application that gives opportunity for both teachers and students to record and create videos for different purposes. 

What is it for learners and teachers?

Screencast-O-Matic is an easy-to-use and effective screen recorder for video creation, management, and sharing. It enables people who can integrate the recording and video editing tools in this App to create a lot of things, such as picture sharing, movies introduction... People can talk in webcam and operate the screen at the same time, with sound of the computer and speaker recorded. 

For students and teachers, video making is not a dream and new in-class or after-class activities can be designed by it.

Here is one video about functions of Screencast-O-Matic. Trust me, it is very easy to be learnt.

What activities can be thought with it to help students practice oral English?

For teachers

Tutorial Video

Teachers can make tutorial videos of usual questions or tasks. Students can watch them as homework, or when they cannot understand the question in the class, they still can watch the tutorial videos after class. For example, if there is one difficult math problem, the teacher can explain how he/she solves it by screen-recording (see the picture below).

picture resource: Google images

For students

Flipped Classroom

Sometimes teachers can let students teach lessons with English on their own by using  Screencast-O-Matic, which can help them practice oral English directly because he/she speak a lot in the video. For example, every week one student can share one interesting story, or some knowledge through video recording. I once showed a favorite picture and described it in the video and then sent it in the classroom for everyone to see (see it below). I think students won't become as afraid as the time when they directly do presentation in the classroom. Shy students can talk more when they are alone. 

screenshot of my Screencast-O-Matic

Some disadvantages

1. Free version is less useful than paid one (or professional one).

2. This application cannot be used to interact online with others, which makes tutorials less time-efficient than some other applications, like Blackboard.

3. Every time you use it, you need to go to the website to open the application, quite complex.

In Conclusion, Screencast-O-Matic is easy to use among free video-recording applications, students and teachers can use it to create different kinds of learning activities, but if you want more professional function, it may not a good choice.