Screen Capture on Chromebooks via Studio (Arc)

[reedbrian]

Many school districts offer Chromebooks to students, our included. And one way that many teachers collect evidence of student learning is by having the students record what is on their screens - presentations, solving math problems, scores from formative assessment tools, digital source collection, and so on.

As a result, students cannot currently screen capture their Chromebooks via Studio since the recording software is the professional version of ScreenCastOMatic, which runs a .exe file, which cannot be run on Chromebooks. 

I propose that the developers at Canvas work with the developers at ScreenCastOMatic in creating a Chromebook-friendly way to screen capture. Sure, the students could just use a 3rd party tool like ScreenCasitfy, a nifty and robust Chrome extension. But if we are trying to keep our students engaged in Canvas and maximize the features of Studio, then a Chromebook-friendly method of screen capturing needs to be created.

Thank you for reading and I hope you vote positively vote for this Canvas enhancement.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the  Studio Release Notes (2021-03-30).

[hackettt]

This would be brilliant.

[thompsondella]

Yes, it would be very helpful and easy to do since students can already use Screencastify on a Chromebook.

[todd_couchon]

Yes, this needs to happen. Been having my students film videos on Canvas Studio since the beginning of the school year on old Dell laptops. Got a beautiful new set of Chromebooks earlier this month, and was discouraged to see screen capture was not an option. Screen Castify is not as intuitive or as streamlined as Castomatic/Studio. 

[Kelvin_Dean]

Search for Screencast O Matic on the Chrome Web Store.

[todd_couchon]

Looks promising. Will check after break.

[hackettt]

Using or recommending any third-party screen recorder misses the point of using Studio. The OP was informing the board that "students cannot currently screen capture their Chromebooks via Studio."

There are multiple solutions in the ChromeStore that allow someone to capture video. However, I do not want my ChromeOS students to have to worry about that. Canvas does not ask Mac or Windows students to use a third-party tool, so why is it asking ChromeOS students?

The beauty of Studio is that students need not worry about finding a solution for capturing video because it's built into Canvas. ChromeOS students need not be excluded from this ability.

[lms]

Also, unless you pay you for Screencast-o-matic, you only get 15 min recording time, instead of the unlimited like we have with PC/Mac. 

[jwadec]

It is unfortunate that the tool Canvas is using,Screencast-o-Matic, isn't built using the WebRTC standard.

With so many schools implementing 1:1 and with Google having a large market share, the ability to record the screen from a Chromebook is very important. I think Instructure needs to move away from the whitelisted version of Screencast-o-Matic in favor of a tool that is built with WebRTC.

[mike_nye1]

50% of our teachers are on Chromebooks as well. Getting this to work on ChromeOS is of paramount importance.

[dpales_salary]

Come on Canvas, help out the teachers. I want to record instructions with the chromebook using Studio so students can see exactly what to do. It would help so much. As of now I have to pay for Screencastify then go through several steps to put the video on Canvas.