Casting Screens

   Today I'll talking about screencasting.  A screencast is a essentially a video of your video screen.  I first became of aware of these when I started my library science classes, as a few of my professors used them to demonstrate various processes on the computer.  They are very useful for showing details on how to access things on the computer or even show how to do an assignment.  Now that I've experienced making them, I plan on using them for my classes the coming school year.  I already give a lot of instructions online for each class, now I can also leave video for them demonstrating what I want them to do.  I could even make screencasts on how to access and use the resources available on the library website.
    I tried out two different screencast programs.  The first I tried was Techsmith's Snagit.  This program is not free, but does offer a free 15 day trial.  One thing that was kind of neat, is that the progress bar during download is a graphic showing basic instructions.  This was actually pretty helpful when I started up the program to use it.  The controls were pretty easy, and you can select a section of the screen you want to record.  There is also video editing software within the program, so that helps polish your product.
     The second I tried was screencast-o-matic.  I had a little trouble starting this one up, which I was a little disappointed about because it seemed the program of choice for my professors.  It didn't give very good instructions on how to, so it took me a while to figure out there was a program I needed to install for it as well.  I was under the impression that it was purely web-based.  After I got past that hurdle, though I found the tool quite useful.  Screecast-o-matic also allows you to change the size of the recording screen, and has other of the same capablities of Snagit.  One function that Screencast-o-matic had that I didn't notice on Snagit, was the ability to add webcam video to the screencast video.  I thought that was pretty cool.  Screencast-o-Matic is a free tool, but there are inexpensive, better versions that you can purchase.
       After using both tools, I think that Screencast-o-matic would be my choice to use.  Both tools were excellent, and truthfully I think Snagit was a better program.  Snagit has all to most of the functionality of screencast-o-matic, but also has the video editing software built in.  As a teacher though, I'm always on the lookout for tools I can use for free, and tools I can share with my colleagues.  For the price and the functionality that goes with it, Screencast-o-matic becomes my choice.  The video I'm including in this blog was created in Snagit.