Screen Recording

The article, “7 Things You Should Know About Screencasting,” makes a very good observation:

“Screencasts capture the feeling of personal connection that podcasts provide, with the added benefit of video to see what is being discussed.”

That “feeling of personal connection” may be the reason why these videos are easy to understand. This can also be the point that we can use to engage our students more: it's the instructor's voice, her computer, and her own words. I believe that this can help adult students be less afraid of new software, for instance.

I have used screen recording for a few semesters now. It is very helpful when students need to learn how to use software or an online service, like a wiki for example.

 

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I have used screen recording for a few semesters now. It is very helpful when students need to learn how to use software or an online service, like a wiki for example.  Here is a link to four of the videos.

The first software I used was Camtasia. It is very good, but also very expensive. Then, I used Apple's QuickTime, and lately Jing. Apple's software is free with the purchase of Snow Leopard®. The problem is that the resulting files are very large. And, for some reason, I need to run them first on QuickTime and save them again in order to upload them to Vimeo.com. Jing is different. The free version is good enough to upload videos and just send/post the links.

In my opinion, this is one of the best software inventions. But even with this great tool, some students still need help. The reason? They say that they cannot open two windows at the same time, or that it's difficult to follow the video and use the video at the same time. However, the adult students in my classes have told me that they like this type of video. The advantage, they say, is that they can see these videos as many times as they want to.