CPD 23 - Thing 18 - Screen Capture and Pod Casting

Screen Capture Tools - Jing

More new tools to experiment with. I got quite excited when I saw that screen capture tools were coming up. I have been looking for ways to make my areas of our Moodle VLE more exciting. I'm responsible for making sure that the science, technology, engineering and maths areas of the learning resources section are useful and engaging for our students.

I have been considering using screen capture to show them how to use some of our online resources. Advice on searching them for example or even just simple things like how to access our ebooks. We do cover this is in our start of year library skills session but some students miss them and others don't remember everything we show them. To be fair we do try to cover quite a lot in a short session. We have written directions on the VLE but a lot of our students are very visual and seeing something demonstrated is helpful for everyone.

Jing seems like a very clever sceen capture system. I love how easy it is to share the finished product. I was a bit worried about that side of it before I tried it out for myself. It seems like it should be very easy to put some screen capture tutorials up on the VLE.

We've looked at some interesting tools during CPD 23 but this is one that I really can put to use straight away. The scheme has motivated me to explore something that I've been meaning to try for a while. Thank you CPD 23.

Pod Casting - Audacity

I'm less sure about pod casting. I know they can be very effective but my past experiences of actually trying to create them suggest that they are not as technically easy as their more enthusiastic supporters claim. It's reasonably easy to create a pod cast but if you want to create one that actually sounds good then you have to either really spend some time mastering the finer points of sound recording or you have to beg for help from technical support.

As pod casting tools go Audacity seems reasonably easy to use and being free is always a plus. To be honest though unlike screen capture technology this probably isn't something that I will be using in the very near future.

It is entirely possible, even likely that I will one day find myself in a situation where pod casting seems like the answer to a need. When that happens I will be glad that CPD 23 gave me another chance to explore the idea and helpfully pointed me towards a free piece of software to do it on.