Like the rest of the country, we ended the school year with what my district called remote learning. This required an enormous amount of creativity on the parts of all educators, not to mention the need to learn and then begin using new technologies practically overnight. Making use of video recording and sharing technology was certainly at the top of the list of new technologies for me as a librarian.

Recording read alouds was the only way to provide my students with some semblance of a normal storytime, so that was my first order of business. I had erroneously assumed that it would be a piece of cake and was unpleasantly suprised to discover that I was wrong! While I love to share stories with my students in person, I find recording myself reading incredibly difficult and cringe-inducing. Even simple things like making sure that the illustrations are close enough to the camera and trying to hold the book still and level are harder than I’d anticipated. I am lucky to have a team of specialists who were eager to work together to create integrated lessons based upon the books I chose to read, so their involvement and excitement definitely helped me find my footing for those 9 weeks of virtual lessons.

I have gotten comfortable with Screencastify and that was the tool I chose to use with my read alouds for remote learning this past spring. Loom, in this week’s sandbox, seems very similar, so that would be one tool I would recommend for virtual learning. I particularly appreciate the way that the screen recording and inset video work together and I think this would be an excellent way to teach myriad subjects. In my opinion, Loom creates a more polished looking finished product than does Screencastify.

I’d also recommend using Animoto for virtual learning, especially after seeing examples from classmates of what they created with it. Meghann Gregoire’s plate tectonics video really highlights the tool’s versatility and how captivating a presentation can be created with it!