Awesome Screen Capture Software

I just heard about an online, free screen recording application called ScreenToaster so I thought I’d test it out.  It works pretty well.  The best thing is it doesn’t require any software to be downloaded to your computer, it’s totally online.

What is it?

“ScreenToaster is a free web-based screen recorder designed to capture screen activity in real-time to rapidly create and share tutorials, demos, training, lectures and more.”picture-1

Pros:

  • Fully online, no software to download
  • Accounts are free
  • Compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
  • Can add audio, video and text captions to your screencasts
  • Easy to share online
  • Can download as .swf or .mov file format
 Cons:

  • Requires Flash to be loaded on the computer
  • The smoothness of the video capture depends upon the speed of the network connection (at least it appears to be)

Why use screen capture software?

  • Create demonstrations
  • Great for teaching math or science equations
  • Create video “talking head” with PowerPoint slide
  • Record lecture

These are only a few.  If you have others please add them via the comments area.  I’m always looking for input.

Compared to Jing

Some of you may have heard of or are using Jing which is a screencast program created by TechSmith.  I’ve been using this program for awhile and really like it.  However, the problem I have is that it only saves the files in .swf format and that is not easily converted for further editing.  Jing is an application that runs from your computer so it may produce smoother video captures since network speed isn’t an issue (although I’ve not tested this).

Jing ScreenToaster
Cost Free but fee-based if want all the features Free
Account Required No Yes
Software Required Yes – must download Jing Yes – Flash is required
Allows for audio voiceover Yes Yes
Allows for video voiceover No Yes
Allows for text captioning No Yes
Allows for easy upload Yes to Screencast.com Yes to YouTube and ScreenToaster.com
Allows for easy download Yes to .swf only Yes to .swf and .mov
Editable later No Yes
Allows you to append a recording No Yes
Allows audio voiceover after the initial recording No Yes
Takes still screenshots Yes No

Tags: software by benignim
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CofC Blogs now allows for Threaded Comments

Have you ever wished that you could have a threaded conversation within your blog instead of using WebCT? Well now you can. Thanks to John and Jared (CofC Webmasters) and the new blog server upgrade you can have threaded comments. It’s easy to do.

  • from within the admin area of  your blog click on Settings
  • now click on Discussion
  • in the main window click Enable threaded (nested) comments next to Other comment settings
  • from the small dropdown window choose the number of threaded levels you wish to allow
  • click Save Changes

picture-6The second thing of note is that only a few blog templates allow the discussions to display as threaded even though you’ve turned threaded on in your settings.  To have the threading display properly you will need to use Twodder, Gear, Simplish or P2. Remember, these are the only themes that will actually display the threaded comments.

Now with your threaded comments you can actually track “conversation” in your blog posting making it much more useful for your class.

Tags: software, tlt, tutorials by benignim
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