Screen casting

Screencasting...an improvement to Blogging?
By John Fallon on May 20, 2005 in Best Practices. Discuss it below
For years, I’ve used the products created by Techsmith for a variety of projects. The latest defined use for their video capture device Camtasia has been incorporated into what is called Screencasting, a term defined by Jon Udell from InfoWorld. Where blogging is essentially text based, a podcast is used for audio, a screencast is used for combining text, audio and video. Although a relatively new concept for expanding blogging entries, for years I’ve used the PowerPoint add-on Microsoft Producer to produce some of my classroom instructional materials that I've incorporated onto the web. Producer allows the combination of text via HTML, audio and movie files. For powerpoint users, screencasting is really not all that new. These days, it seems that everyone is trying to jump on the “ogging” bandwagon. Even Serious Magic has developed software for the art of “Vlogging” (video blogging). I’ve seen some of the files/screencasting projects that have been produced with Camtasia and they do look and function great. I can see that at the beginning of the next school year, I’m going to do some experimenting with screencasting with at least one of my classes. I just hope that we don’t dilute the overall concept of blogging that provides a medium for concentration on written material. From an educational viewpoint, we need more opportunities for students to write and improve their skill, not additional opportunities to create multimedia extravaganzas.