This month’s blog entry on using the AASL Best Websites in your schools and libraries focuses on TouchCast (http://www.touchcast.com/). The AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning Committee categorized this exciting site as Media Sharing in 2015. TouchCast is an entirely new way to experience video. Users can embed web links, documents, pictures, and more into video presentations. This site allows students, teachers, and librarians to make video completely interactive. TouchCast offers templates and easy-to-use options. Users can create content online or use the TouchCast App for a full hands-on experience. Your users can create and show videos on the TouchCast site, or opt to share via Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.
TouchCast is a great online tool and app for library and school tours, presentations, and overall information. Just think about it; offering a completely interactive tour of your library complete with downloads embedded in the video. This is completely feasible with TouchCast and so easy to do. How about a principal telling his/her students about a new type of technology for the school? TouchCast is a great video tool for that type of information as well. Check out this informative video from Dr. Brad Gustafson with Greenwood Elementary School and his Flipped School Board Presentation. The video is below or you can follow the link (http://www.touchcast.com/greenwood/flipped_school_board_presentation)
TouchCast is an excellent tool for the flipped classroom but it also works well for video creation and information delivery. It is creative and fun. The template-based video production makes it easy to use. Simply record video and overlay with what TouchCast call vApps, which are the embeddable options for your videos; these could be images, documents, social media, and much more. TouchCast offers a host of example and featured videos as well as tutorial sessions to help with your own creation. The only thing limiting you is your imagination. TouchCast is a great video production tool that students will love.
Author: Heather Moorefield-Lang
Heather Moorefield-Lang is an associate professor at The University of South Carolina in the School of Library and Information Science. To see more of Heather’s work visit her website at www.techfifteen.com, email her at moorefield-lang@sc.edu, or follow her on Twitter @actinginthelib.
Categories: Blog Topics, Technology
Leave a Reply