Screen capture - A few years ago I read an article about screencasting and thought it a great idea. I asked our e-learning manager if we had any tools to do them with, as I thought we should give it a go. She pointed me in the direction of ActivStudio, which is the software we used with our interactive whiteboards and Audacity. I set about making a screencast about how to log onto Athens.
The screen capture bit was very straightforward, the voice over part wasn't. Audacity is easy enough to use but what to say wasn't and the timing proved awkward. It was decided that we needed a script, so that was written and then we watched the video through to see what needed to be said where. Once we had got this sorted out, we recorded the voice over. Nerves got the better of me, so some bits had to be recorded more than once in order to take out me tripping over my words or just completely forgetting what to say, even though I had it in front of me!
Finally we managed to get it quite good, even if I hated my voice over, and in fact compared to other screencasts I'd seen at the time, I thought we made a very good job of it. Things have moved on since then and we now have Camtasia. And thankfully I don't have to do voice overs anymore, as our ILT Advisor has a great voice for them.
Podcasting - technically this is something I have never done. However I have recorded myself in an interview situation with an mp3 recorder, which is what I would have used if I was making podcasts. Again this is something I don't do because the ILT Advisor has the right voice. However I was involved with the content of the podcasts. Again we scripted what needed to be said before recording it, to try to make the recording as smooth as possible. This, along with the need for recording in a quiet room, is probably the most useful advise I would pass along to others trying these out for the first time. The actual using of the software seems to be the easy part, it is what to say and how fast / slow, script it out first and The Book Gryphon is right, speak much slower than you would normally otherwise the demonstrations will be too fast.
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