Screencasting for just-in-time teaching and learning

Via OL Daily–and the timing couldn’t have been better–a list of screencasting tools from Mashable.  I’m a big fan of using (short) screencasted clips to help students–but mostly instructors–get oriented to tech tools. I’m reminded of a time (circa 2000 or so) when I was a digital media student at a small college where the instructor’s idea of ‘teaching’ was to print out the online manuals for the software and distribute them to the class, then hide in his office while we ‘learned’ Photoshop, Director, and Premier.  Sure, there’s a lot to be said about learning by doing, but when one of the students came across a site full of screencasted tutorials we felt like we’d hit the jackpot.  Oddly, the instructor resented us using the screencasts, and if I recall correctly he might have even blocked the site at some point.   Anyhow, the experience taught me that some things that need to be learned are very well suited to screencasting.  I’ve dabbled with ScreenRecord on my Mac  and have been quite pleased, but I’m keen to try some of the others on the list.  My thought is follow up f2f demos of tools with some screencasts that instructors can access on their own time, and if I’m lucky, I won’t have to create very many since some good people are quite happy to share them on YouTube and the like.

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