The web tools I use regularly to develop online courses and tutorials are chosen for their ability to facilitate research identified best practices in course development. This particular screencasting tool allows the instructor to convey a sense of presence in the course. Screencast-O-Matic.Com is an excellent way to narrate PowerPoint or Prezi lectures. Imagine the difference between reading a welcome message from your professor and hearing the professor welcome you personally to the course. Screencast-O-Matic can also be used to show course navigation features, how to participate in a discussion, or how to upload an assignment. If you have a webcam, this tool will also capture your image in a small frame positioned in the lower right corner of the completed screencast. There is no need to develop courses with just text. Visual and auditory learning styles can be accommodated with this tool.
What tools do you like to use for screencasting?
The YouTube video was prepared for a professional development workshop and screencasts how to follow me on Twitter.
This is neat. When I was teaching online I felt the same, so I prepared weekly introductions for my students. I used PowerPoint and Camtasia Studio.
Do you caption your videos? At our college, captioning is required for online video material.
Yes. Sometimes I caption the videos other times I attach a transcript of the audio. YouTube can caption videos but you have to correct the errors and then disable the machine transcription. Once you’re done with the edits, it looks good. I also use Camtasia. You can train the software to your voice. The more you use it the better it gets but you still have to make edits. We’ve also outsourced captioning to CaptionSync. They do a great job for the most economical cost. One 6 min video costs $16 and there are volume discounts.