How could Screencast be used in your classroom/department?

In our Humanities 7 classroom we recently had the students learning geography and mapping concepts such as: latitude, longitude, locating a city using latitude and longitude, the Prime Meridian, the International Dateline, the tropics, the temperate zones, the eight cardinal points of the compass, the difference between weather and climate, the effect of elevation on temperature and climate.

 I think if we were to do this unit again, or a similar one, Screencast would be ideally suited to having the students learn the material in a “Circle of Experts” group and then film themselves so that other students can learn the material. There would be many benefits of having the students become experts in one or two of the topics from the unit and then teach the other students. Also, Screencast would enable a permanent video and audio to be created that could be accessed at any time by the students.

 Another application might be to use Screencast in literature circles wherein small groups of students film themselves discussing a book with each student taking different roles: literary luminary, discussion director, word wizard, symbol decoder etc. The possibilities for using Screencast in the classroom are almost endless as the teacher could make Screencasts that would explain assignments or model some aspect of the writing and reading processes.