As technology becomes ever more present in the education system, the University of Idaho is hosting workshops on how to use the new technology in the classroom.
In the Doceo Center, located on the third floor of the Education Building, a small group of professors gathered around a computer to learn about screen casting and how they can use it in classes.
Screen casting is a way to record the screen on a computer or tablet, said Cassidy Hall, director of the Doceo Center. It is often used for making tutorials, explaining difficult topics and for answering frequently asked questions professors get from students.
Doceo Center director Cassidy Hall teaches how to record a screen or webcam during the Screencasting workshop Moday in the Doceo Center.
Tips on making good screen casting videos came from the University of Notre Dame, and included that videos should stay under 10 minutes and that each video should cover only a single topic. The link to the complete list can be found on the Doceo website. Other tips were to talk slowly and enunciate words, Hall said.
The tool Hall recommended for screen casting is Screencast-O-Matic, which is free to use if videos are under 15 minutes long. There is an initial download, but after that, it is as simple as going to the website and clicking launch, Hall said. For longer videos, Hall said Zoom, a video conferencing tool, would work best. There is also an app called ShowMe, which is free and is for recording on tablets.
How to put those videos on YouTube was another topic Hall covered. Screencast-O-Matic can automatically upload the videos onto YouTube or it can save them as a variety of file types, Hall said. Zoom, on the other hand, can save its recordings as a video or an audio file, depending on what the user is looking for. Next came a tutorial on how to embed the videos into BBLearn for the students to access.
Hall demonstrated how to make videos unlisted or private and said she made hers public because it was just her in the videos and because they were all tutorial-based. It is possible to see unlisted videos if the creator shares the link to the video, Hall said.
Nancy Deringer, an assistant professor in the School of Family and Consumer Science, said she attended because of the online class she teaches. The most important piece of information Deringer said she learned is to keep the videos short and prepare a script.
For more tips and tutorials, Hall recommends going to the Doceo Center webpage at here.
Kali Nelson can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @kalinelson6