Screencasting = time and effort!
Wow. It took me a long time to make my screencast. I tried to watch it a few times, and my screencast tends to get stuck in the middle... and the audio doesn't quite sync up at the end. It all worked fine within my project. I used Captivate to cast my tutorial, and maybe I should have used something different. It was fairly easy to figure out, mostly because they screencasted all their tutorials on how to use the software! Also, one other issue is that I think my sizing is too big. I tried to resize my project, and I don't think that worked very well either. Resizing is irrevocable, and though I tried to save my original file, I cannot get it to open. As a result, I have two screencasts--same project, different sizes. Here's the link to the original file and here's the smaller version (just be warned, things got cut out and weird when I resized). To get the full-effect of what I was trying to accomplish, please view the original file.
All that to say that I think I preferred podcasting. It is much easier to record audio alone than to try and sync up audio with video. Some people are really talented at this. I don't think I am one of those people.
As a result of my sizing difficulties, I got to think about accessibility issues. I feel like both of my screencasts are the wrong size. One of them is too big to fit on the screen, however, all the links, textboxes, etc., are very legible and easy to read. In the small version, you can follow all my actions, but none of the text is very legible. I needed a happy medium, and perhaps with more time, I might have figured out what that was. At this point, I would have to re-record everything in order to figure out what size works best. I have to say, this has been one of the best learning experiences due to the number of irrevocable mistakes I just made! Now I know that size matters, how to get the text bubbles to sync up with my audio, and that I should work on transitions. The transitions (between slide to slide) worked great until I published the project. Now when you watch it, there's all this white space that shouldn't be there.
I'm normally a perfectionist with things that are published, so this all irks me a bit.
This medium, however, can be very powerful and they really can make presentations more interesting. But now I know that I should be prepared for a significant time investment if I want to create a screencast.
Change of Subject: My favorite vodcast
I really liked the book trailers that the teens did for the Pima County Public Library. I had actually wondered about some of the books that were profiled, and those kids did a great job! I'll bet they had a good time making those videos.
These were effective for a number of reasons-- there was a contest, the quality of entries is excellent and the library now has some very engaging footage on its website. These videos are also used by the library as a marketing tool. Each video in the series ended with, "you can find this book at the Pima County Library." I thought it was a great idea.
