Screencasting

A learner who missed a session recently said that he'd had a bit of trouble adding text to a curve - something we talked about in the class that he missed, but that was only covered briefly in the handouts.

Rather than try to explain in an email / screen shots how to carry out the task, I thought it would be much easier to do a quick Screencast.  I remember a colleague showing me Screencast-O-Matic some time ago, and I recalled how easy it seemed to be to create a simple screencast, so I decided to have a go at creating one myself.

After resolving the missing Java plug-in on my Firefox browser, I was shown a screen which simply said "Start Recording".  I didn't do any prep (other than to have a quick practice at the task myself in Photoshop to ensure I made the steps as clear as possible).  I clicked Start Recording, adjusted the screencasting window size and hit the record button.

After completing the required steps to create my curved text, I pressed the stop button, and was then given an option to upload to YouTube or Screencast-O-Matic.  I chose the latter, though I think I will definitely explore the YouTube option in the future.

I was amazed at how simple it was.  In fact, I was so impressed that I registered an account (free), set up a Photoshop channel, and even had a go at adding captions (which I then removed).

Things I learned:

• Screencast-O-Matic is extremely simple and quick to use
• The automatic highlighting of key actions (eg mouse clicks) is excellent
• The sharing options are very straightforward
• Whilst a mouse click shows, click and drag doesn't - something to remember when doing the commentary 
• I need a better microphone!

I will definitely start using this more in the future, as I think it will be an excellent tool for all my learners. You can see the results of my first attempt below or on the link:  Adding text to a curve - apologies for the poor audio, this is something I'll improve on in the future!