Screencasting for Assessment

While I have been thinking of screencasting as useful for instruction, Kristin Fontichiaro found a great idea from Troy Hicks for using screencasting as an assessment tool.  Having students create screencasts of their projects where they explain how they found certain items and why they included those items makes the learning transparent and avoids the assumption of learning just because a presentation is 'slick'. What a great way to assess meta-cognition!  As well as using screencasts to demonstrate learning (teacher assessment), students could create a screencast to reflect on their own work in terms of how well they met the criteria and what they would do differently next time (self-assessment), or could comment on other's work (peer-assessment) as suggested by Shelly Terrell.  At our school  (South Park Family School in Victoria, BC) we use three-way reporting - teacher, student and parent. Screencasting could be a way for parents who could not attend student-led conferences (perhaps due to work, living far away etc.) to add their input.  Although, I think a Voicethread might suit this purpose even better as the slides could be created by the teacher or student with some knowledge of the program and then parents would only need to have a microphone to comment.  All three parties could comment on the same Voicethread.  Is there a way to collaborate on a screencast?  Something for me to look into during this inquiry....

Here is a testimonial from a teacher who used Jing for assessment and peer coaching (posted on Jing):

Jing transforms 7th grade classroom

"Jing was the most amazing addition to my classroom last year. Teaching 7th grade math has always been very fun for me - kids at this age are usually terrified of math and getting up in front of the classroom.
I'd been looking for an easier way to upload my teaching videos when someone mentioned the Jing Project. I downloaded it that night and came to school the next day SO EXCITED!!
I showed Jing to my students and they instantly wanted to use it. Suddenly EVERY student wanted to work math problems on the board. Students come to the board and record themselves working on problems in front of the class.
Students started recording themselves working on math problems at home and would email them to me, or to each other, even uploading the videos to their own student-created web pages.
We even turned “The Jing Project” into a verb and I found myself saying, “Who wants to Jing one of the homework problems?” Hands went up like crazy! Jing has been an excellent resource, and has TRANSFORMED the way I teach forever.”

Image Credit:  screencast of "Share ideas instantly" captured with Jing from http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html?gclid=CPGTzIzQ16wCFQMDQAodeS5N_Q