Back in September 2011 Instructional Technologist Mendi Benigni did a post on screen-casting (simply put, screen-casting is the act of recording the activity on a computer screen. Any action a user makes on their screen can be recorded as a video). As you leave for the summer and soon start to plan your classes for the Fall, please review Mendi’s post to get some ideas on why you might do a screencast and some tools to create one. One of the tools suggested is Camtasia and if you would like to test out Camtasia before you buy it, we do have it installed on one of our computers in the FTC located in room 323 JC Long building. There are many more tools out there and we have not had the opportunity to test them all, so here is a link to more free and paid screen capture tools for your information: http://mashable.com/2008/02/21/screencasting-video-tutorials/
Also check out Robert Talbert’s article Data on whether and how students watch screencast to get an idea on the effectiveness of using screencast.
If you do decided to give screencasting a try keep in mind these few tips:
- Know your audience
- Write a script
- Create a storyboard
- Decide and plan what you will record ahead of time. It will take you longer than you think!