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Screencasting

• Why you are doing this• About screencasts• Creating your screencast

© 2015 Karen L. Thompson English 313: Business Writing Department of English University of Idaho

English 313: Business Writing

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Why you doing this:

• Screencasts are a 21st century workplace communication product.

• Knowing what they are, how to produce one, and what constitutes an effective screencast is a transferable skill.

• Screencasting is another communication skill set you can put into the tool kit you are building while in this course.

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About Screencasts

• Screencasts capture all or a portion of a computer screen while the author narrates what the viewer is seeing in a voice-over audio.

• Screencasts are used by businesses and organizations for a wide variety of purposes and viewed by both internal and external audiences.

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Here are just a few examples.

• Internal Screencasts– Collaborate with others to

share ideas, solve problems, and communicate asynchronously,

– Provide progress reports to project managers,

– Provide internal technical documentation,

– Create internal multimedia communication that is more accessible for employees with disabilities,

– And much more……

• External Screencasts– Target a specific audience by

personalizing the sales pitch to that audience,

– Provide external technical documentation such as specifications, instructions, definitions, and descriptions to enhance product support,

– Create external multimedia communication that is more accessible for audiences with disabilities,

– And much more . . . . .

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Creating Your Screencast

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Sponsor Audience and Your Purpose

• Your audience for the screencast is the sponsor you imagined as a client when creating the PSA billboard or poster.

• Your purpose is to justify the design decisions you made by connecting these to concepts of effective graphic design covered in the course materials.

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Keep in Mind

• You should imagine that your sponsor does not know these concepts, so you will need to both explain (briefly) the design concept and then connect it to your choices.

• Here’s why: you want the client (sponsor) to feel secure that your choices are justified based on graphic design principles and not simply a matter of your personal taste.

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Apply what you learned and practiced when creating the podcast:

• Listen to your podcast again.

• Is there room for improvement?

• Apply the vocal tips you learned previously to help you when doing the voice-over audio for the screencast.

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Screencasting Steps

Step 1:• Choose one of the free cloud-computing tools in

bblearn to create your podcast.

• If the tool requires you to create an account before you can use it, be certain you do not pay for anything.

• If the tool does not host the screencast, you will need to signup for a host site. Often the tool will suggest sites for you to use. Again, be certain these are free.

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Screencasting steps continued

Step 2: • compose the script (see outline in the project handout) just

as you did for the podcast, mark it if you find that to be helpful when delivering the audio.

Step 3:• place the visual you created on your desktop and

position the script next to it, so you can easily refer to the script as you create the voice-over narrative.

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Screencasting steps continued

Step 4:• Use one of the built-in screen resolution

sizes in the tool you chose and be certain your visual fits within that screen.

Step 5:• Do some practice runs to get a feel for how

to do the screencast.

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Finally• Don’t try to be perfect. You can make some mistakes

when speaking, and it won’t matter.

• I’m not expecting a professional screencast from you. Your process is more important than the end result.

• Watch the screencast and notice what you might want to improve if you had more time and tell me in your self-evaluation.

• You can also tell me what was easy about this part of the project, and what you found to be most difficult about screencasting.