To Screencast or not to Screencast ?

by Giulia Guarnieri Posted on April 12, 2011

I have been looking for some screencasts programs to use for my upcoming summer workshop. Screencast are useful for tutorials, for illustrating powerpoints presentations, to explain a concept or document, for making short presentations, etc. It can also assist the instructor to add additional learning materials and extend the class time beyond the confines of the classroom. There are many tools one can use, like Jing, Camtasia, Screenr, Wink, ScreenJelly, etc. I want to share with the community a wikipedia site that compares all software for screencasts, from free to commercial ones. 

I tried a couple of these programs some are good, some are OK, some… not so useful.  These are the main problems I discovered: 1) once you record your screencast the time to upload the file into a server (also youtube) is infinite, it takes twice as much to upload it than to record it.  2) Some of the software lasts a very short time (the free versions) and records for only 5 minutes – in the case of Jing — and 3 minutes for ScreenJelly. 3) The other limit is that you can’t edit the sound, so if the phone rings after 10 min into your project you have to start all over !

I found a WIKI resource page for screencast, I hope you will find it useful enough to want to try some of these programs.

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2 Responses to To Screencast or not to Screencast ?

  1. Avatar of Giulia Guarnieri Giulia Guarnieri says:
    April 13, 2011 at 12:07 pm

    Thanks Sarah, yes that is another problem, these company exist but until when? I know that if you pay for Jing it also allows you to do more. The problem is that if you try to ask students to produce podcasts such as I do using screencasts, I do not want to have them pay for software. Also some professors might be reluctant to even try it if there are costs involved. I love Captivate, but I had to pay $300! Oh well….

  2. Avatar of Sarah Morgano Sarah Morgano says:
    April 13, 2011 at 11:55 am

    Hi Giulia,

    It would be great to add some of these resources to the Kitchen Sink/Kitchen Table Utilities wiki page.

    I have explored some of the free screencasting programs out there and have taken a liking to Screen-O-Matic. We upgraded to Pro for only $9.99/year and now we can edit our videos (including sound). I used this to create the new CUNY Academic Commons Tour. I believe you can only record up to 15 minutes, but it has a very short learning curve.

    On another note, I was surprised to learn that Screentoaster.com is no longer available to use and wish that I had backed up the videos I created on that site!

    Best,
    Sarah

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