Creating and Uploading a Screencast

Instructional videos are a great way to provide education, e.g., instructions, tutorials, online. You are essentially capturing a video of your computer screen and adding audio, usually your own voice narration as you navigate through your computer desktop. Here, I used Jing software and uploaded it to Screencast. The process is fairly easy, although I couldn't find any editing features off hand and the recording starts a little earlier than I wanted. Anyway, enjoy this first attempt at creating an instructional screen capture video.

http://screencast.com/t/xLe1RLopT4
 

Creating and Uploading a PodCast

This is a podcast I created for an assignment for Multimedia and Interactive Technologies class.  It had to have me speaking, plus a background track.  I also used a fade in effect for the music, which is Happiness by Alexis Jordan.  I am in Palm Springs at the moment.  I chose this Alexis Jordan song because she performed here last year.



Podcasts can be used for lectures, additional instructions for assignments, etc.

Creating Flash Cards for Studying Vocabulary

Flashcards can be made and distributed to students by creating them in PowerPoint, saving the slides in a JPEG format, and zipping the folder for downloading.  Here is one that I created using technology terms.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6qGVuww0Dqxdk03bGtTdjlNYmc/edit?usp=sharing

Embedding a Video Into PowerPoint

When embedding a video, simply click on the video icon in PowerPoint (looks like a film strip) and choose the file from the Windows Explorer or Mac Finder pop up window.

When I used PowerPoint for Mac 2011, an embedded AVI file wouldn't play, but the WMV version works.  It may be because Microsoft understandingly designs its products to be compatible with other Microsoft products.  I also found out that on this version of PowerPoint, the video can be played in slideshow view, as well as in normal view.

Using YouTube Videos for Instruction

Many schools block the YouTube site to prevent students from viewing inappropriate content.  However, there is also a lot of educational content that would be useful for class instruction and research assignments.  One way to allow students to view specific YouTube videos is to download them and convert them to a format, such as AVI or WMV, that can be embedded in the class blog or in a PowerPoint video.  I used a Mac with YTD Video Downloader and Kigo Video Converter.  The video below is one that was downloaded from YouTube, converted, and now embedded into this blog post.