ISTE 2012 Presenter Profiles: Shane Lovellette

Shane Lovellette is the Product Manager for Camtasia Studio and Camtasia for Mac. Shane joined TechSmith in 2003 with over eight years of management and production experience in video and television. Being a strong advocate of the Flipped classroom model, Shane assists educators in implementing and maintaining the use of technology in the classroom. Shane, along with the rest of the Camtasia team, works hard to tailor TechSmith products to best serve our hard working educators and students in this technology-driven world.

An interview with Shane:

Why is it important to implement technology in the classroom?
Students are becoming more and more aware of technology. They’ve been exposed to it from a very young age in a lot of cases, so they come into the classroom almost expecting to use technology. They need to be comfortable with it and understand how to use it in order to grow and move forward in whatever career path they choose to follow because technology is always going to be a part of everyday life.

I think that technology can have significant impact on the teacher’s ability to more effectively teach. It’s not an answer; you can’t just throw in technology and expect great results. But technology can facilitate learning and help teachers support and interact with students better. So it’s not just about having technology- it’s about how that technology is implemented and how it’s leveraged within the classroom.

How is Camtasia uniquely designed to help educators?
Camtasia is specifically designed to help leverage video and to extend teachers’ reach beyond the classroom. For example in the Flipped classroom model, Camtasia Studio allows teachers to record their lesson and be able to deliver it to students outside the classroom. Students can watch the video, get familiar with it, and then come to class ready to engage directly with the teacher.

Using video also enables teachers to provide supporting videos for when they’re gone. Having a substitute teacher for a day in class is then no longer a waste of a day. The sub can play back videos that are provided by the teacher so that the students can continue working on problems.

It’s also a great way for teachers to communicate with their peers, parents, and administrators outside the classroom. Teachers often use newsletters to communicate with parents but it’s so much more personal and engaging to provide a video of what’s going on in class instead.

And finally, Camtasia is designed to assess student learning. With our quizzing feature and automated reporting of quiz results, teachers can determine whether students are watching the videos and how well they’re understanding the material. For example, if the report shows that students are watching 90%+ of the videos but have low quiz grades, maybe the content needs to be adjusted.

How do we hope to improve the educator experience?
We want to help teachers save time. We want them to be able to spend more time creating content rather than figuring out how to use the software.

We also want to provide enough flexibility to support different types of teaching. We talk to a lot of teachers one-on-one and observe what they do in the classroom so we can better understand their needs. We have a group of teachers—an advisory group—that give us a lot of feedback on these issues.

What are some exciting things that have come out of the new update (Camtasia Studio 8 ) for educators?

Automated quizzing and reporting
Supportive of almost any device now- iPad, Android, etc. Viewable on all devices. Not just for watching, but for interacting through quizzes and links as well
Table of contents for jumping to different subjects and reviewing
Provided Screencast.com hosting and embedded links
Removed all technical burden and made it simple to use

Connect with Shane: