Quickcast and autoCrat – two important #pegeek tools

Invasive Plant Work by Zen Sutherland CC BY NC SA

This is not my first sharing on the use of Screencasts and autoCrat as part of the #Physed teacher’s toolkit.  But I thought I would share some screencasts of my latest autoCrat journey as I have been asked about it a lot recently on Twitter.

I now use Quickcast as my screencast tool, it is easy to install (on my Mac) and is very quick to set up and go.  I can only cast for 3 minutes and this is perfect as I can say what I need to usually in that time frame.  The screencasts are saved online so I can share the URL’s and they are saved on my computer in the Quickcast folder so that I can upload them if I need to original, to embed in YouTube or other as I would like.

If you haven’t used either of these tools, I would like to encourage you to take the time to become used to using them.  I have really changed my assessment practice due to the use of these tools.  I now use screencasting (a screen recording of my computer screen with my voice over the top) for almost every assessment that comes my way.  I screencast written assessment, using the mouse to show the area of discussion and to show the assessment rubric for reference; I use it to watch dance or other PE performance videos and voice over the top while pausing at relevant parts of the video for discussion, and the response from my students is very positive.

I use autoCrat as much as I can for summative assessment feedback.  I create documents for each student and then share them with them via Google drive.  I then set a homework or in class task to read my feedback and set goals moving forward into our next unit.  I am tempted to put these document URLs into the student report cards for parents as there is more here than I have room for on my school report cards, and I have really shared a lot with each student every 6-7 weeks, more than I could hope to do in another setting.

I have also used autoCrat to:

• set up a certificate with all students names/levels (you can do this via a Google form too)
• email parents who are hosting sporting students from visiting schools
• share medical information for camps

Please take the time to share your use, other PE teachers will learn from your experimentation!  Please watch these videos below to begin your journey:

Introduction to Quickcast and autoCrat
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Preparing your documents and installing autoCrat

autoCrat steps for completing your merge

Running your autoCrat merge

Last thoughts and ideas for autoCrat