Instructify

BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

Ahh, another day, another useful application with a nonsensical name. If you’re a visual learner like me, if you want to learn how to do something, you want to see how it’s done. In the realm of computers, this often means screen sharing. Enter Mikogo, a free-to-use, downloadable application for sharing your screen between up to ten people.

Mikogo’s interface is intuitive, works for both Mac and Windows machines, and best of all, it allows you to record the session for later viewing. The only real drawback I see is that there is no microphone support, so if you want to talk during the screen sharing, you’ll either need to have conduct a conference call, or rely on a separate piece of communication software such as Skype. That said, if you’re looking for a simple-to-use screen sharing application, Mikogo could be exactly the answer.

Mikogo

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

It’s a sad day here at Instructify central headquarters. We have to bid a tearful farewell to one of our favorite free screencasting applications, Screentoaster, which has boarded up the virtual windows and packed it in. We often review applications and wonder, “How can these folks offer such a great service for free?” The answer is sometimes, sadly, they can’t.

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BY BILL FERRIS

It’s that time of year again when lazy bloggers rehash old material under the guise of “Best of” lists rather than come up with new stuff. Instructify is no exception.

Below are the top 10 Instructify posts of 2009. The rankings were determined via a combination of Google Analytics, retweets, and the capricious and arbitrary whims of the editor.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Screenjelly, the latest free screencasting application, counts on simplicity to differentiate it from its competitors. It’s a little light on features, but by eliminating options such as choosing the size of your recording window (Screenjelly records the full screen automatically), it makes it easy to just start recording.

Pros

Screenjelly mimics Screencastle by sticking a shiny, candy-like button in the middle of your screen. With the press of a single button (and a quick check of your audio settings) you can start recording. It’s pretty intuitive.

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BY BILL FERRIS

A screencast is a slick way to demonstrate lessons or concepts to your students. You can use screencasts in online courses, sub plans, or for visual storytelling assignments. In this advanced age we live in, you can make lots of high-quality screencasts with free web applications. Below are Instructify’s top 5 screencast tools. All of them are free and easy to use.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Students have gotten used to doing things electronically. Your classroom doesn’t have to be an exception thanks to LectureTools, a learning management thingy from the University of Michigan.

Developers designed LectureTools with huge, impersonal college lecture courses in mind. However, there’s a lot here that K-12 teachers can use, too (though some of them would probably be best suited for 1:1 laptop environments). (more…)

Now that ScreenToaster has rolled out a truckload of features for free, older screencasting apps are doing what they can to keep up. Screencast-o-Matic was the first screencaster we wrote about on Instructify, and they’ve added a bevy of bells and whistles to work their way back into our hearts. Now you can upload your screencast straight to YouTube and choose between more capture sizes.

The best new features, though, are the improved audio and video quality, and the ability to export your screencast to Windows Media Player (AVI), Quicktime (MOV) and Flash (FLV) formats (no exporting in sight for RealPlayer, which I can only hope the folks at Real take as a hint and just bury their player already). That means you can download your screencast and edit it later, so if you flubbed your lines and want to overdub new audio for your electronic sub plan, or you want to add credits or a title screen to a demonstration, you can do so with the video-editing software you probably already have on your computer.

As companies keep adding features to their screencasting apps, I have a hunch these tools won’t remain free forever. For the time being, though, you can create some high-quality screencasts without spending a cent. -BILL FERRIS

Screencast-o-Matic

Tutorial showcasing new features

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With the continued success of many web 2.0 tools being used by teachers and students in the classroom comes the need to have an easy way to demonstrate these incredible tools. The easiest way to accomplish this is by providing teachers and students with a video screencast demonstrating the features and uses of these online resources. ScreenToaster is another free utility which makes the process very simple.

There are many other free options for recording screencasts, but ScreenToaster has several features which set it apart from the others. First is the ability to create an account to store your videos. This is always handy for retrieving your past work. In addition, ScreenToaster allows you to record via a webcam along with your screencast. With the inclusion of audio narration, you can personalize your screencasts for your audience. ScreenToaster also allows you to add captions once you’ve recorded your video. Once your happy with your screencast, ScreenToaster allows you to save your video as a Quicktime (.mov) file, a Shockwave (.swf) file or easily upload your video to ScreenToaster as a high quality video or to YouTube directly from the ScreenToaster page.

The quality of the videos are excellent and the additional features make ScreenToaster a must see tool.

You can view a great demo of ScreenToaster here. -JERRY SWIATEK

ScreenToaster

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Many of us spend a lot of time showing the same things over and over to various colleagues or students. Recording your computer screen or “screencasting” is a great way to cut down on some of these repetitive tasks. The problem is that many of these screencasting tools can cost $300 or more. However, a new web tool available from Skoffer gets the job done at a much better price — free.

ScreenCastle.com is an amazingly simple screencasting tool. Upon visiting their site, you’re greeted by only one button, which starts recording. The tool uses Java, which most of us have installed on our computers already. If you don’t have Java or need to upgrade your version, you can get it at Java’s website. After clicking on record, select the size and the section of the screen you want to record. This is a great feature which allows you to pinpoint a specific area of your screen. You also have the option to record audio from a microphone. If you’d like to narrate your screencast, be sure this button is checked. There is no way to edit the audio once you’ve recorded, so you’ll need to be a “one-take actor.” Don’t worry, you can easily start over if you mess up. When you’re happy with the area you’ve selected click OK. When you’re finished recording simply click on Finished, watch the preview and, if you’re happy, click Save. It’s as simple as that.

ScreenCastle.com is an incredibly easy, free solution for creating screencasts and recording your narration. It certainly doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles of any of it’s expensive counterparts, but if you’re looking to create quick and simple videos, this is the tool to use. -JERRY SWIATEK

Check out a sample screencast here.

ScreenCastle.com

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Let’s say that one day you reserve the clunky and complicated audiovisual cart with the laptop and projector and wheel it painfully to your non-electronic classroom so that you can give a live demonstration to your students of how to do something absolutely crucial that can only be done on a computer: how to use a particular library research database, how to make a PowerPoint presentation for their final class project, exactly where to go in the learning management system to check their grades. One wheel of the cart was apparently possessed, heading north when its brethren were heading east, just like a wheel on any given shopping cart. You hate that A/V cart. You’d be willing to deal with anything, anything, never to have to use it again. Even video codecs. Yes. Even those.

CamStudio is for you, then. It’s open source, Windows-only software that will allow you to make a video recording of whatever’s happening on your computer screen; it outputs video in .avi or .swf formats. CamStudio lets you add captions to your screencast, but if you’d like to add a voice-over, you can get a little PC microphone such as the Logitech USB Desktop Microphone for under $20, and there are some mic models that sell for under $10. Record your lesson, post it online, tell your students to watch it, and there you go. No more cart.

CamStudio is a fairly easy program to use, as long as you don’t count the settings. Video recording settings can be very confusing, which certainly isn’t CamStudio’s fault, but the default settings in CamStudio aren’t going to give you the high-quality, small-size, easily shareable files that you want. I therefore recommend watching this helpful CamStudio tutorial on YouTube — and yes, the YouTube tutorial was itself made with CamStudio. It’s been viewed over 150,000 times as of this date, so hey, that tells you something. — AMANDA FRENCH

CamStudio

Related Links:

Make awesome screencasts with Jing

Effortlessly create video demonstrations with Screencast-o-Matic

Extend your classroom to the ends of the earth by making a screencast. Jing is a free download that will record whatever you’re doing on-screen and turn it into a small movie that you can share with others. It’s easy enough that even a n00b like me can make my own screencast in just a couple of minutes.

A screencast is a great way to put lessons online, create tutorials for assignments, or make an electronic sub plan for days you’re out of the classroom. -BILL FERRIS

Jing

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Effortlessly Create Video Demonstrations with Screencast-o-Matic
Make an Electronic Sub Plan

Are you using screencasts yet? For the uninitiated, screencasts are mini-movies that demonstrate how to perform tasks on the computer. And making your own is super-easy thanks to Screencast-o-Matic. Easy to use and incredibly useful – that’s a combo that we at Instructify always appreciate.

Screencast-o-Matic uses a transparent frame that you place over whatever program you want to demonstrate. Just hit record and do your stuff. Screencast-o-Matic records your every mouse click so students can see, for example, how to create a drop down list in Excel. If you have a microphone, you can even add audio. When you’re done, export it to a Quicktime .mov file and share your teaching prowess with your students and the world.

If little Johnny is out with the flu, just send him a link to an online tutorial you put together in about five minutes. Screencast-o-Matic is perfect for illustrating research methods, musical instrument tutorials, or if you need to demonstrate a particular piece of software. Speaking of software, to make your screencasts you’ll need Java 1.5, which you probably have installed already. You won’t need to download anything else, though – Screencast-o-Matic is completely online. And soon, your lessons can be online, too. -BILL FERRIS

Screencast-o-Matic

How do you use screencasts? Let us know in the comments!