Screencast

Jing, Screencaster, Screenr, Screen-O-Matic

Just a few weeks ago, I tod myhusband that I wanted to know how to make the videos you see on YouTube all the time, the "How To" videos to help when I am in a rut and trying to figure things out. I told him I wanted to figure it out for this coming school year for my students to use when I am out fo my Practicum hours.  This week hit the nail right on the head. I was so excited for this task knowing I wanted to do this and want to use it in the future.

I looked into several sites that would assist me in making such videos. Most had their advantages, while one site was a complete bummer.

The first site that I looked into was Jing. When create a short video, I found Jing to be user friendly. I decided to do a video on accessing our school library catalog from our school district website. Our campus is a one to one campus and all students have access to a tablet or desktop. Because our campus does not provide lockers to students, they are required to carry their tablets home. Sharing this video will allow students to search the catalog for books of interest in various formats that theyfind suitable for their needs.

I like that Jing was available to use whenever I needed it. The "sun" sits in the upper right hand corner of my computer screen and I am able to access it at any given time. I like that I can take a video or an image of my screen. I do like Skitch when taking images and manipulating the images with highlighting words or phrases, but I was no able to take videos and share it from the site, I was able to do so with Jing.

One complication I came into was trying to embed the video. When I entered teh embedded link, this is the result.   2016-07-28_1345

When needing to open up the Jing video, I had to connect with Screencast. Here I am able to share my video by embedding the link, providing the URL link, or emailing it to anyone. This site was user friendly as well. I have not purchased the subsrciption. I will definitely look into for future ideas.

I was disappointed to find that Screenr was not longer available for anyone to create videos. I was no longer available after November of 2015. Previous users are still able to access their videos that they have created through a hyperlink to another page.

Screen-O-Matic was the last site that I looked at. I had some issues getting the program to work on my Mac and had to dig out my husband Window's laptop to work on. After downloading the program, I was finally able to move forward with the activity. After some trial and error, I finally made a video manuvering the learning mangament system our district uses, Schoology.

Once the video was made and reviewed it, I knew this was the site for me. I found the site to be very easy to use. I liked how the curser was identified with a yellow circle to draw the viewers eye to the screen and follow along with the speaker.  I liked how "in time" the video was with the actions as I manuvered through my video.
 


Out of the several screencasting sites I visited, I would use Screen-O-Matic. I felt it was more professional and easy to manuver. I was able to share my video is a variety of ways, select what channel I wanted the video to be under, and provide details about what the video was about as well as provide a password if I wanted to do so. I think my students and co-workers would appreciate the curser and videos that would assist them in navigating a task.