Module 3: HaikuDeck and ScreenCast

This past week I've been learning how to use HaikuDeck and subsequently, talk about it in my Screencast project.

I enjoyed using HaikuDeck as it was a very simple presentation tool that creates simple, beautiful presentations. I think it enforces teachers and professionals to not depend on powerpoint to explain things but instead use it as just an aide, as it is supposed to be.

I could see how in older students it would be a struggle because they are dependent upon the powerpoints for notes, but I think that isn't as good because then they are just busy taking notes instead of paying attention to the lecture or the explanation the teacher is providing.

It also enforces teachers to be effective teachers. I recall my old biology teacher who is so dependent upon his powerpoints and just reads them off to us. It was very boring, unstimulating, and nobody cared as they can just get the information in a web search or school systems such as Moodle pages. Students are not engaged and are not learning, and teachers aren't able to teach without their powerpoints. Enforcing, short text in powerpoints and instead emphasize on the visuals makes powerpoints a visual aide, and keeps the focus on the teacher's lecture and explanation.

It's also good for students that are easily distracted to make their powerpoints as it could search for related pictures from within the site, and so it does not need for the user to go to another tab and look for pictures and then save and reupload it. Haikudeck also connects to Facebook, Google Drive, Picasa, etc so that getting pictures from these sites are easy and straight forward, without being distracting with their newsfeed and anything else.

Aside from that, I learned about how to use Screencast. I thought it was interesting as I've seen some people do it when I seek for tutorials on Youtube and always wondered how they did that. I tried Jing to do so, but for some reason it did not capture my screen and instead just showcase it as a black screen with voice. So I don't think I'd recommend Jing to do a screencast.

What worked best was Screencast-o-matic, which did it smoothly and uploaded it directly to Youtube, which was convenient for me to easily share it with others and link it to my portfolio. It eliminates the step to download the video to my computer and then upload it to Youtube. It's faster and more effective in sharing. Screencast was not able to do that and instead just share it in it's own site.