There was a sudden increase with more than half of the schools starting to use Screencastify overnight.Īt the beginning of March, they saw a growth of 497% in videos made per day, an increase of 340% in daily users, and over 1 million minutes of recording. They noticed that this spike was happening in Hong Kong, one of the first locations besides China to have schools shut down. In mid-February, the team saw an unusual spike in the use of Screencastify. The team stays motivated to keep going because they are seeing an increased need for this technology for students and the benefits for teachers in creating instructional videos. The company also hired former teachers so that they had an authentic connection and could empathize with what educators were feeling.

Because they don’t have that classroom experience, they depend on their connections with the users of their product, to better understand the experiences of teachers in regular classrooms and now during remote teaching, so that they can provide the best support and products for them. The Founder and CTO Manuel Braun, as well as Francis, do not have a background as classroom teachers, however, Francis believes that this is what has helped them the most. The Screencastify team has ten members, a mix of educators and non-educators. In 2016, Screencastify became the first Chrome extension that could access video and record the screen. It was an opportunity to take something that had been a complicated experience and make it simple. According to James Francis, CEO of Screencastify, people who wanted to create a screencast almost had to be a professional. The idea for Screencastify came when Manuel Braun, Founder, and current Chief Technology Officer, recognized that the options available for creating a screen recording were either expensive, involved a difficult or time-consuming process, or required the download of the software. Screencastify, a free screen recorder for Chrome which was initially created for use outside of education, now reports that 70% of its users are teachers.

Chrome extension screencastify