a pinch of SaLT

Screencastify Review

Screencastify is a free app (with a paid option) that is used to record your webcam, browser, tab or desktop. For more information see the video below...

As a clinician, I am very interested in how technology can be harnessed to support progression in sessions, communication with others and streamline our ability to do our jobs.  Almost everything I do other than therapy is via a laptop: my notes, client information and resources are all saved either or on the computer on the ‘cloud’. Email is my primary mode of communication and I send about 30 emails a day, around 50% of these with attachments. Due to the COVID19 lockdown, I am now in a situation where ALL my work (including therapy) will be via laptop and the cloud. I still need to provide homework tasks for clients, communicate with parents and train staff remotely, so screencastify seemed like this could help. 

I decided to give screencastify premium a go, using their free trial during the pandemic, (unfortunately this has ended now). I wanted to see if this would be useful in supporting my ability to do my job well in lockdown, specifically focusing on: 

• Parent Communication: Could this be used to add a more personal touch but also demonstrate things remotely? I have shared instructional videos in the past, but never by sharing my screen.
• Student communication: Would I be able to do asynchronous teletherapy with this? Would I be able to set homework tasks with clear explanations?
• Personal development: This is a new and exciting way to deliver therapy. I also just love the idea of it and it seemed exciting to me. So, would it work for me as a clinician? 

While there are other ways to record your screen, the simplicity of it shown on the YouTube video led me to trialing this. I also liked how focused they were on educators in particular, as I work in a school this could be something I could share with others. 

Installation & Set up

I downloaded the screencastify chrome extension. This took me less than 15 seconds and after setting up an account (sign in with google, accept permissions), I was ready to go in less than 1 minute. Their YouTube video which is less than 2 minutes long explained everything and I was ready to go. 10/10 for ease of set up.  

How to Record

Once again, I was surprised by how easy this was you press the screencastify button on your toolbar and then you can choose from the following options:

• Film your tab only
• Film you entire desktop screen
• Film via webcam only

You also have the option to 

• Have a countdown before the recording starts (time to prep your screen if you need it)
• Have access to drawing tools so you can draw on your screen while recording
• Record tab audio (e.g. if you have a video playing on the tab already)
• Embed your webcam video- so you appear in a little box while you are presenting or talking through the screen)

Quality of the Recordings

The recordings were nice and clear, however, when editing them in the browser editor they did lose focus a bit but this was regained when the video was saved. 

Special Features

Screencastify has the following features:

• Record screen and webcam
• Trim your videos
• Autosave to Google Drive
• Export as MP4, GIF and MP3
• Full HD resolution
• No watermark
• Annotation tools
• Publish to YouTube

Screencastify premium has the same plus:

• Unlimited recording length
• Merge videos and reorder clips
• Crop your recordings
• Add text over clips
• Priority support

I used all of these features (apart from priority support as I didn’t need it) and found them easy to use. The only real difference between free and premium that would have an impact for me is the unlimited video recording with the premium price plan. 

Applying this to Therapy

At the time of writing this, I am working from home due to the COVID-19 lockdown, so screencastify is brilliant with the following right now:

• Asynchronous work and therapy for students/clients
• Remote and asynchronous staff training
• Demonstrating how to do things on the computer and sharing with colleagues and students (e.g. logging into a website).

 I think this could be a useful tool even when the current lockdown lifts as it provides a way of making communication more accessible. For example, sending home videos of demonstrations of student’s work, or even short catch up videos (particularly if it is difficult to schedule phone calls), introducing yourself to your caseload and their family via video. There is also a really exciting feature (for me anyway), you can download a QR code for your video, meaning you can easily link to the video via QR link, you could put these on leaflets, storage buckets and they would link to the appropriate video e.g. a video of how to play a game (storage bin), a video with a short presentation on how to support language difficulties in the classroom. 

Furthermore if teachers also use this in the classroom, students and staff will be very familiar and it ties in nicely to the wider curriculum. If they do not, it makes no difference as it is so simple to set up and share. 

Screencastify also suggests the following ideas (which I have not yet tried):

• Linking to school newsletters
• Have students create their own screencastify presentations (could be useful for presentation skills!)
• Providing feedback to students via video and sharing your screen with their work at the same time. 

I took a great 1 hour ‘Master the screencast’ course which had some excellent ideas for teaching, which crossed over well with teletherapy. I even got a little badge for it...look!

Privacy

Screencastify says the following:

‘’You control where your data is stored. All of your recordings can be safely stored and encrypted in your Google Drive account or locally on your device. If you choose to store your recordings locally, your video files are stored on a sandboxed local HTML5 file system managed by Chrome. This file system resides in the profile directory of Chrome, but cannot be accessed directly with a file browser of your operating system. To export a file to a regular file system, use the “Save to Disk” button inside Screencastify.

We don’t own or even host your videos, and we'll never show you an ad or hand over your information to anyone who intends on doing so. Our business model is simple: we make money from selling subscriptions. That’s it.’’

In terms of privacy, screencastify seems relatively safe, however to be on the safe side I would never put client names or information on the videos.

Verdict

I’ve been using screencastify for a month now and I have found it a brilliant tool. I can absolutely see myself using this post lockdown. In fact my free premium trial ends in 3 days and I have already requested if my employer will renew the subscription for me. I like the simplicity, the ease of use and how it has opened more doors to my professional practise. I am especially excited with this new way of sharing information with stakeholders as well as clients. As the person often asked for technology support- it’s great to be able to record and forward to others to empower them to be able to do it themselves! 

Here’s a quick video I drummed up using screencastify too!