Thoughts on screencasting ...

Created by Matt Pasiewicz (EDUCAUSE) on April 14, 2006

ELI recently came out with a new rendition of their "Seven Things" series. This one is on screencasting. I love screencasting and have learned a lot from some of the screencasts that I've consumed. The article mentioned above has an instructional technology slant to it, but the area that interests me most about the potential for the technology is for demonstrating the features and functionality of open source software.

Just recently, I used a screencast to get a preview of some new, open source functionality that some people in the drupal community are working on ... http://www.zacker.org/node/30

If you take a peek at it, you can clearly see that these are things that just don't translate well into text or audio only, and this seems like a really rich model for demonstrating open source products that can't provide sales teams to go out and hock their wares. Furthermore, it is one thing to provide demos and community rankings of open source software like the great site over at OpenSource CMS or to provide really rich profiles of software that aid in decision support -- like what's been done over at EduTools, but I think it is another to provide guided tours of key features of software products. I think screencasts can provide a really nice intermediary by enabling folks to get a feel for a product with out having to invest a lot of time blindly learning from a base install of software.

Can screencasts compete with a sales team that can meet with you one-on-one? Well, yes, in many ways, you bet it can. Name one sales person that is going to show me a demonstration of their software at 4AM. Now, multiply that condition by a whole host of people that could spread awareness of a screencast via word-of-mouth. Well, okay, I need to get off my soap box here as I haven't taken the time to do many myself ... just one. Still, I remain hopeful that an organiztion and/or groups of "small pieces loosely joined" will take great strides towards taking up this banner and creating a series of well produced pieces that we can all learn from. That might not have been entirely coherent, but hopefully it made sense.

What do you think? I'd be interested in your thoughts ... does anyone have any ideas about why we haven't seen more of these?

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		Thoughts on screencasting ... Created by Matt Pasiewicz (EDUCAUSE) on April 14, 2006 ELI recently came out with a new rendition of their "Seven Things" series. This one is on screencasting. I love screencasting and have learned a lot from some of the screencasts that I've consumed. The article mentioned above has an instructional technology slant to it, but the area that interests me most about the potential for the technology is for demonstrating the features and functionality of open source software. Just recently, I used a screencast to get a preview of some new, open source functionality that some people in the drupal community are working on ... http://www.zacker.org/node/30 If you take a peek at it, you can clearly see that these are things that just don't translate well into text or audio only, and this seems like a really rich model for demonstrating open source products that can't provide sales teams to go out and hock their wares. Furthermore, it is one thing to provide demos and community rankings of open source software like the great site over at OpenSource CMS or to provide really rich profiles of software that aid in decision support -- like what's been done over at EduTools, but I think it is another to provide guided tours of key features of software products. I think screencasts can provide a really nice intermediary by enabling folks to get a feel for a product with out having to invest a lot of time blindly learning from a base install of software. Can screencasts compete with a sales team that can meet with you one-on-one? Well, yes, in many ways, you bet it can. Name one sales person that is going to show me a demonstration of their software at 4AM. Now, multiply that condition by a whole host of people that could spread awareness of a screencast via word-of-mouth. Well, okay, I need to get off my soap box here as I haven't taken the time to do many myself ... just one. Still, I remain hopeful that an organiztion and/or groups of "small pieces loosely joined" will take great strides towards taking up this banner and creating a series of well produced pieces that we can all learn from. That might not have been entirely coherent, but hopefully it made sense. What do you think? I'd be interested in your thoughts ... does anyone have any ideas about why we haven't seen more of these? educore \| Open Source \| OSS \| Screencasting \| screencasts Matt's blog Login or register to post comments 4763 reads
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