We all love teaching, that’s why we do it. It gives us purpose in life, students never cease to amaze us, research fills us with motivation and intrigue, conferences are the greatest things on the planet and are so much craic …but marking… marking is different.

Especially when you’ve 50+ essays to mark in a weekend on top of your planning, teaching and life around it.

But! This year, I came across a wonderful tool that instead of writing about it – as that would defeat the purpose of its existence, I thought I’d make a video on it to explain what it is and how it works.

The tool is Screencastify. An extension add on to the web browser Google Chrome – oddly I seem to have split my laptop usage into two different browsers – Firefox for my personal stuff as it is top notch in terms of privacy, and Google Chrome for any conference or school related material.

Using a free version of the Screencastify tool, you get to record your screen for up to five minutes, as well as your webcam and your microphone which allows you to give detailed and personalised feedback to each student privately about their work.

Having trialled this several times now, I asked my students would they prefer to continue with the videos or return to written feedback… and 100% of them stuck to video feedback emailed back to them. There’s that sorted then.

Below is a video explaining the application, how it works, looks and feels. I’d highly recommend it.