Pratical Ed Tech Tip of the Week – Screencasting Tools

ByRichard Byrne

When you’re introducing students or colleagues to a new website or piece of software, you’re bound to find yourself answering the same type of question over and over again. One way to address those questions is through a screencast video demonstration. Creating screencast videos is also a good way to create short flipped video lessons in which you record yourself talking over a set of visual aids. Screencast-O-Matic and SnagIt for Chrome are my favorite tools for creating screencast videos.

Screencast-O-Matic is available in a free version and a pro version. The free version allows you to record for up to fifteen minutes at a time (that is plenty of time for most screencasts), publish to YouTube in HD, and save videos to your computer as MP4, AVI, and FLV files. The pro version ($15/year) includes video editing tools, unlimited recording lengths, a script tool, and removal of the Screencast-O-Matic watermark. Both versions of Screencast-O-Matic include a highlighted circle around your cursor so that viewers can easily follow your movements on the screen. A webcam recording option is included in the free and pro versions of Screencast-O-Matic.

 Snagit for Chrome is a tool that supports creating screencasts on your Chromebook. Your recordings can be saved in your Google Drive account. To use the screencasting option in Snagit for Chrome you have to install both the Snagit for Chrome extension and Chrome app.  The Snagit Chrome extension is what allows you to capture your screen. The Snagit Chrome app allows you to save your screen captures in your Google Drive account. You do have to install both the extension and the app for Snagit to work correctly.

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