Recording your Lessons in ActivInspire

I have to admit that I had been overlooking a tool in ActivInspire for a long time until just recently and now it is something that I use almost daily. That tool is the Screen Recorder.


What the tool allows for is two different modes of capturing what you are doing on the computer at a time. You can choose the Fullscreen or Area screen Recorder. Fullscreen is obvious but the Area screen recorder allows you to pick a location on the screen by dragging a box around the area you want to record. Once you select the area or tell Inspire that you want to record it puts a small control box on the screen.


To start recording just click the Red Circle on the controller. A pop up box will ask you were you want to save and what you want to name the video. The file format is .avi which is easily editable on either a PC or Mac. Then all you have to do is use the Inspire software like you normally would in class and the system records all of the actions. Now the system will also record whether or not you are in Inspire or not so if you need to go out to a website it will still record what you are doing. If you have a microphone attached to your computer it will record you speaking as well.

Well now you might be saying to yourself, so what? How can I use this in my classroom with students. One of the easiest things I have found to do with the recorder is to make short "How To" videos within the Inspire software. So how do you access the Screen Recorder Tool in ActivInspire? It is very easy and there are a number of ways to get there. The easiest is to select from the Menu bar at the top of the page View then More Tools and Screen Recorder. From your floating toolbox click on the Menu Button then Tools, More Tools and Screen Recorder. The Screen Recorder can also be accessed from the Desktop Tools "floating gadget"



You can have your students come up to the ActivBoard to complete lessons, work out math problems, identify/label objects, chart maps and graphs, and a myriad of other things that allow your lessons to be both interactive and have a multimedia component to them. Again you may be saying how will this affect me in my instructional day? Creating the multimedia products and the interaction with the interactive white boards can fulfill the new evaluation tool for Standard IV for integrating and utilizing technology in instruction. It could also cover part of the new Common Core standards for using technology tools and skills to reinforce classroom concepts and activities. As well as using technology and other resources for the purpose of assessing, organizing, and sharing of information.

images created from: ActivInspire software