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Creating and Sharing Screencasts
by Jim Hollis

I would like to pick up where I left off from my last blog post called: An Easy and Fun Way to Create Educational Content

In this post, I will describe how to create something called a Screencast. A screencast is a video that captures what you are doing on your computer. For example, you might want to create a screencast that demonstrates how to use a particular software program. Your screencast will contain all the movements of your computer along with your voice-over description of what you are doing.

The great thing about creating screencasts and sharing them with other people is that it is very easy to do and you can do it using free resources from the Internet. The only additional piece of hardware you may need is a microphone.

The best way to demonstrate how to create a screencast is to actually create a screencast that shows me creating a screencast. (If your head is spinning a little, don't worry, this is actually pretty easy.)

Let's say I want to create a video (screencast) of how to use a feature of the Smart Notebook software (you can create a screencast showing how to use any software program). The first video below will demonstrate how I use the web resource freescreencast.com to create my screencast. The second video is the actual screencast that I created using freescreencast.com. 

Video: Using FreeScreenCast.com to create a screencast

Now let's look at the actual screencast:

I actually used the embed code from freescreencast.com to embed the video in this blog post. You can see all of this by going to the URL of my screencast at FreeScreenCast.com

I know a lot of this may seem difficult at first glance. However, with a little practice, you will become experts at creating useful screencast videos to share with others.

As educators, we need to provide as much support to students as possible if we truly want to create a student-centered learning environment. Creating screencasts is a simple but highly effective tool for helping students learn.

Sharing is Caring!

Jim is an Education Consultant working to help teachers use technology to create student-centered learning environments. Jim has 8 years experience in the classroom and has a Masters Degree in Education and a BS Degree in Computer Science. Jim is currently working on creating online learning environments for teacher professional development programs. Jim can be reached at mail@teacheronlinetraining.com