Thoughts on Edubloggers

I was quite inspired by Eric Langhorst's Speaking of History blog. In particular, I was drawn to his post on creating screencasts and videos for his students while away.

At the time of the post, he had recently returned from the Mount Vernon Missouri Teachers' Workshop, where he had spent the weekend learning about George Washington and Mount Vernon with fellow teachers. His enthusiasm for the trip was obvious: he took numerous gorgeous photos and was driven to create a six-minute screencast for his students explaining a particular aspect of what he had learned at the workshop.

He arranged a few of the photos he took showcasing the "rustication" on George Washington's house and created a voiceover that taken together present a thorough lesson on this method of building that was used in Washington's time. While still at the workshop, he had his sub show the screencast to his class. Thus, he managed to teach his class while away; not only this, he managed to allow his students a taste of the travel experience that he was able to enjoy.

More importantly, however, I believe that by revealing to his students his own affinity for being a lifelong learner of history, he modeled intellectual curiosity in a powerful and inspiring way. Furthermore, his screencast allowed students a glimpse at "doing history." Students are used to reading history textbooks which present historical events in a way that takes for granted the methods historians use to acquire such knowledge. In fact, the act of broadening our understanding of history is an inquiry-based, piece-by-piece process. By focusing the screencast on a rather limited subject: the material used to construct the house, and presenting it in the form of an inquiry/discovery, he showed his students the method used by historians to learn about the past.

I have not yet received a response from Eric. After using screencasting last week for the webinar project, however, I was excited to see an application of screencasting in a middle school classroom. I'd be curious to know if he has used screencasting since this September blog post.