Does this ever happen to you? You find a really cool new tool that you just have to share with someone. Anyone. Even your kids. Who probably have zero interest in technical communications and words like screencasting and content distribution platforms.
Is Your Kid a Geek, Yet?
For better or worse, our offspring get to play with tech writing tools like Adobe Photoshop, Flash, and Camtasia. Flash is their fav, by far.
and we’ve recently found a new one. Screencast.com
What’s the deal with Screencast.com?
This is one of Techsmith’s lesser known tools and is ideal for screen-casting, especially in school and other educational scenarios.
And they’ve just made it better.
From the site, ‘Our products are the tools that students and teachers use to create engaging content that motivates kids to learn. Jing, Camtasia Studio, Camtasia for Mac, and Camtasia Relay are regularly used to quickly communicate great ideas and record lectures and classroom activities, and to deliver all that great content to the masses is Screencast.com.’
I use it with Jing (used to create online videos. think Camtasia for the web) and upload the movies to Screencast where I share files with my development team,
What’s New?
Some of the groovy new features in Screencast.com include:
- Supports the display of closed captions created in Camtasia Studio 7.1, Camtasia for Mac 1.2, and CamtasiaRelay 3.0, on three platforms – Flash, Silverlight (with Camtasia Relay content only for now).
- Supports HTML5 – lets students access content hosted on Screencast.com from their iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.
- Search through the caption and transcription text of a video – effectively letting the viewer navigate to points of interest as easily as typing in a keyword or two.
- Search on the Flash and Silverlight platforms, and an HTML5 solution should be here soon.
- Supports Tables of contents in Flash, Silverlight, and HTML5, and Flash-based hot spots created with the Camtasia family of products.
What’s the Price?
You can get started with a free account and see if it’s right for you. I’ve found this to be fine for me and will upgrade soon as we have a large project coming online that will use lots of video file.
Think Help files with Video and you get the idea.
The Acid Test
I forgot to mention this. For me the acid test of most all new apps is if my Dad (mid 60s) or Jr (10) can use it WITHOUT having to read the manual.
He finds it a breeze. They may use it as his school for a twinning project, so that gets him involved.
How about you? Have you tried screen-casting yet? If not, what’s the main barrier?
Tools, training, price?
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