Making Screencasts with Camtasia Dr. Mark Morton, Centre for Teaching Excellence Alan Kirker, ITMS

What is a screencast?  It’s a narrated video of your computer screen.  It’s not a video recording of a live event – e.g. a class lecture.  Screencasts can include anything from still images (such as PowerPoint slides, photos, charts) to full motion (for example, the movement of your mouse cursor, drawing or writing on slide, video clips from lab demonstrations, etc.).  Screencasts can be enhanced with Call outs (arrows or circles that emphasize certain parts of the screen image) Title cards (cards with text that introduce a new section of the screencast). Panning (moving around your computer screen) and zooming (magnifying a certain part of your computer screen)

Screencast are a growing phenomenon  The Khan Academy (a repository of education screencasts) now has over 6000 screencasts on math, biology, physics, chemistry and more.  Every month, screencasts on the Khan Academy are accessed by more than 10 million students.

What are the benefits of Screencasts?  You can use screencasts to deliver content that you don’t want to cover in class  Students can access the screencasts whenever and wherever they like  Students can watch the screencasts as many times as they like  You can deliver content outside of class time so that you can devote class time to interactive learning activities

Should You Make a Screencast? 1. How many screencasts will you make? Is it worth the time it takes to learn the tool? 2. Will the screencasts save you time later on? 3. Will your students benefit more from the screencast than if you delivered the content in class? 4. Is your content suitable for a screencast? A discussion of a class policy might be better presented as a document than a screencast. An explanation of the parts of the atom might be perfect for a screencast.

What Screencasting Tool Should You Use?  ​ Narrated PowerPoint Narrated PowerPoint  MyBrainShark MyBrainShark  Screencast-o-Matic Screencast-o-Matic  Camtasia Camtasia  Adobe Presenter Adobe Presenter  Explain Eve rything Explain Eve rything

A diversity of Screencasts You can easily do better than this.this  Example of Bad Screencasting With practice, screencasts of this quality are within your reach:  Khan Academy: The Cell Khan Academy: The Cell  Mark Morton: The Flipped Classroom Mark Morton: The Flipped Classroom  Mark Morton: Smart(phone) Pedagogy Mark Morton: Smart(phone) Pedagogy  Camtasia: Pre-Recording Tips Camtasia: Pre-Recording Tips  Mark Morton: 17 th -Century Typography (made with Explain Everything on an iPad) Mark Morton: 17 th -Century Typography For something like this, you’ll need either a lot of time or a production team:  How to Screencast like a Boss How to Screencast like a Boss

Best Practices  Aim to sound authentic rather than perfect  Keep your screencasts less than 10 minutes in length  Use images (and other visual content) to demonstrate or reinforce what you are saying  Use images that are freely available under a Creative Commons license  Use a good microphone  Provide captions  Use the picture-in-the picture feature effectively  Work from a script if you need to (like this one)this one  Use screencasts to “flip” your classroom

Further Resources  CTE Tip Sheet on Screencasts CTE Tip Sheet on Screencasts  CTE Tip Sheet on Camtasia Studio CTE Tip Sheet on Camtasia Studio  CTE Tip Sheets on Flipping the Classroom CTE Tip Sheets on Flipping the Classroom  A two-page summary of this workshop A two-page summary of this workshop

The Rest of This Workshop: 1. I will demonstrate how to use basic editing tools in Camtasia Studio 2. You will practice using those tools 3. I will demonstrate how to record your screen using Camtasia Studio