Screencast-o-matic

Created by Lorie Mitchell (New Mexico State University at Carlsbad) on June 25, 2007

This is a post I wrote for a Sloan-C workshop I'm currently participating in. I had to pick a Web 2.0 tool and evaluate it. I thought some of you might find it very useful! :)

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I'm finding creating a screencast using Screencast-o-matic is entirely too easy! It's simply a quick and dirty way to do a full screen capture with mouse motions. I used a Mac with OS X 10 to do my screen capture, as I've had trouble finding anything easy to use for screen captures that also capture mouse movements...or at least not as easy to use as Macromedia Captivate for the PC. My main complaint about S-o-matic is that you can't edit the screen lengths. I have quite a delay on a couple of the slides that in Captivate I can easily re-time. However, for a quick student hint or help, it can't be beat. It's cross-platform (thank you Web 2.0!!) and very simple to use. I found it very intuitive, actually, but I also have experience with Captivate, and the interface reminded me of Captivate a bit in the recording feature.

Here's the URL to my screen capture. I captured how to create a new page in this wiki, of all things! ;)

http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/ci1TIDY6

I hope you enjoy playing with this tool as much as I did! I can definitely see how I will use it as an instructional designer!

To answer Burk's questions on the discussion board, you can't add audio to the screencasts just by using this tool. However, you can export your movie. It downloads as an MOV file, which you can edit in QuickTime Pro (you must have the PRO version, though.) You can add text notes at various points in the cast, though, and your students can add notes back to you.

I see this as a useful tool mainly in dealing with technology issues. As I support students using WebCT, if a student is having trouble using WebCT, I could ask them to screencast what they are doing, OR, I can screencast what they SHOULD be doing and send it to them quickly and easily. When I was teaching software classes, this would have been useful to show the students how to do a particularly difficult step. I don't like that it doesn't have audio, but you can work around that with the notes feature.

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		Screencast-o-matic Created by Lorie Mitchell (New Mexico State University at Carlsbad) on June 25, 2007 This is a post I wrote for a Sloan-C workshop I'm currently participating in. I had to pick a Web 2.0 tool and evaluate it. I thought some of you might find it very useful! :) ******************** I'm finding creating a screencast using Screencast-o-matic is entirely too easy! It's simply a quick and dirty way to do a full screen capture with mouse motions. I used a Mac with OS X 10 to do my screen capture, as I've had trouble finding anything easy to use for screen captures that also capture mouse movements...or at least not as easy to use as Macromedia Captivate for the PC. My main complaint about S-o-matic is that you can't edit the screen lengths. I have quite a delay on a couple of the slides that in Captivate I can easily re-time. However, for a quick student hint or help, it can't be beat. It's cross-platform (thank you Web 2.0!!) and very simple to use. I found it very intuitive, actually, but I also have experience with Captivate, and the interface reminded me of Captivate a bit in the recording feature. Here's the URL to my screen capture. I captured how to create a new page in this wiki, of all things! ;) http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/ci1TIDY6 I hope you enjoy playing with this tool as much as I did! I can definitely see how I will use it as an instructional designer! To answer Burk's questions on the discussion board, you can't add audio to the screencasts just by using this tool. However, you can export your movie. It downloads as an MOV file, which you can edit in QuickTime Pro (you must have the PRO version, though.) You can add text notes at various points in the cast, though, and your students can add notes back to you. I see this as a useful tool mainly in dealing with technology issues. As I support students using WebCT, if a student is having trouble using WebCT, I could ask them to screencast what they are doing, OR, I can screencast what they SHOULD be doing and send it to them quickly and easily. When I was teaching software classes, this would have been useful to show the students how to do a particularly difficult step. I don't like that it doesn't have audio, but you can work around that with the notes feature. captivate \| screencast-o-matic \| Tools \| Web 2.0 Lorie's blog Login or register to post comments 3049 reads
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