Screencasting

What is a Screencast?

What is a screencast? A screencast is a digital recording of your computer screen. It often includes presentation slides or anything else you wish to show your audience, such as web pages, online articles, photographs and illustrations. The idea is for you to include your commentary and narration as you walk the viewer through a step-by-step process and / or illustrate a series of concepts.

Videos and screencasts offer:

• on-demand review: they can be rewound and replayed, slowed down, sped up or frozen, to reinforce learning
• enhanced accessibility: via closed-captioning for the hearing impaired
• multiple language options: with additional languages on alternate audio tracks if needed

 

Tips on How to Present When Screencasting

As a teacher you have had a lot of practice telling the story of dozens of topics and walking your students through ideas step by step. So you've got this! Here are some tips from a teacher just like you (for the full article, see Seven Steps to Creating Screencast Videos for Online Learning Links to an external site.).

TIPS

Keep your lesson short. Focus on something that takes about five minutes to teach...  Speak in a conversational, yet professional manner. Pretend you are talking with a friend, or visualize a class in front of you as you talk... Do not worry about making mistakes. You can keep re-recording over and over again until you get it right...and small errors can actually help to keep it natural. Use diverse materials for your recordings — PowerPoint presentation, pictures, flowcharts, or anything you would have written on a board... But, keep it simple! We have all been abused by a presentation that used too much. Sometimes less really is more. Make materials accessible for students with disabilities. For example, you will want to provide a transcript or closed-captioning of your video lecture.

 

Screencasting Tools

And now to the technology--what tools do you need? Ideally a USB microphone or headset with a microphone is recommended. Your voice is a very important part of an onscreen presentation. The built-in computer mic option may leave you sounding muffled. 

There are many free tools available.  In the table below we have outlined two possible options that New England Tech uses for online courses. You may have used them for other purposes, like attending a Zoom online meeting or using Kaltura to add video to a Canvas course. The table includes account and  help resource links. But if you have a different tool that you prefer to use, please do!

Zoom Friendly web meeting tool compatible with PC, Mac and mobile. Used at NEIT for our courses The free version allows unlimited 1 to 1 meetings with a 40 min limit on group meetings See how to get an account and use Zoom for screencasting Check out Zoom's general Help Center Links to an external site.or FAQ Top Questions Links to an external site.

Kaltura NEIT's video suite compatible with Mac and PC Also enables you to record your screen and webcam using Personal Capture Get started Links to an external site. with personal capture Search the personal capture user guide Links to an external site. for targeted help As NEIT faculty you can contact Kaltura support Links to an external site.

 

Screencast Example

Here is a screencast example from NEIT Instructor Samantha Rosenthal demonstrating to Biostatistics students how to use the software tool STATA . The clip is 15 minutes long; feel free to sample what you need to get the idea (Screen-Cast-O-Matic was used to create it).