Screencasting

What can I say about this little jewel.  Last year I took part in a Technology Leadership Forum for our District and was out once a month, I presented at a conference and took our Model UN team to several conferences.  So I was out of my classroom a lot and did not want my students to miss a lot of instruction.  So I started screen casting.  I record several days’ worth of lessons just as though I would be in classroom.  I would include any material we would cover and record all instructions/directions.  The students felt I was there with them and it was a normal day.  I thought it would be funny to include "stop talking" every now and then but never did it.  My co-teacher told me one day, the students actually tried to ask me a question like we were skyping. 

Along with recording lessons, the tools can be used to record additional lessons for to review later or if you have centers created with different tasks at each center. An excellent way for differentiation.
I have used both Jing and Screencast-O-matic.  Both are great tools; however I love Screencast-O-matic direct updates to YouTube and Drop box.

I created a screen cast below and included part of one of the screen cast lessons I did last year.