... Today I made a Tutorial Using my SMART Board!

Today I made my first tutorial using my SMART Board! It was surprisingly simple and I'm a little sad I didn't give it a try sooner! It was such a simple way for me to provide support to struggling students and to help students with make-up work from when they are absent.

To make the tutorial, I used the "Recorder" option on the SMART board toolbar. The toolbar I'm referring to is typically docked at the side of your screen. And looks something like this:

If the "Recorder" option isn't on the toolbar, you can click the Settings button on the bottom to add it (just drag and drop it). The icon looks like a little camcorder. 

Once you have the tool located, you can click it to open it up. It brings up a small box that has a few buttons: Record, Pause, Stop, and a Menu drop down menu. From there it's pretty simple to figure out -- Record to Record, Stop to Stop... you get the idea.

The SMART board I have has a microphone built into it and records audio along with screencasts while recording. The screencasts will show whatever is showing on your SMART board screen, including any ink notations or other tools you use. This allows you to work through a problem on the board and it will record your writing simultaneously with your voice. Awesome! Students not only get the benefit of seeing how you work out a problem, but also get your verbal explanation. 

After you are finished recording, click stop on the recorder screen. It will create the video file for the recording (this takes a few minutes) as a .wmv file (played in windows media player) and you can save it to your computer. I chose to upload my tutorial videos to a YouTube channel so my students can easily locate all of them. This also allowed me to link them to their online course page (eClass). 

For my first tutorials, I used a few stoichiometry problems we did together in class. Stoichiometry is one of those topics that students have to repeatedly review and practice and I chose to show them problems they had already seen so they could follow along with their work and hopefully find how to fix their mistakes. In the future, I'd like to also include key lectures for units so students can use them to study for tests. I was able to make three stoichiometry videos (about 5 min. each) in one prep period, and I am able to use them and refer to them over and over. Seems like a short time commitment for a great payout! 

I wanted to post a link to my YouTube channel so you can see for yourself what they look like and how helpful they will be to students. 

Has anyone else tried this out? What do your students think?