1

Screencasting

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

© 2015 Rhetoric and Composition Program English 313: Business Writing Department of English University of Idaho

English 317: Technical Writing

2

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.

3

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.

4

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 . . . . .

5

Creating Your Screencast

6

Audience and Purpose

• Imagine that you are a member of a project team, and the purpose of your screencast is to justify the design decisions you made in creating the infographic.

• It’s important that you connect your justification to the principles of effective graphic design (color, typography, Gestalt theories etc.) as covered in the course materials.

• Here’s why: you want your justification to be resting on a firm foundation of graphic design principles and not simply a matter of your personal taste.

7

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.

8

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.

9

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 infographic 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.

10

Screencasting steps continuedStep 4:• Use one of the built-in screen resolution sizes in the tool you

chose and be certain your infographic fits in the width of that screen size. Be certain you have enough room to scroll down as you speak while still staying within the screen.

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

screencast.

11

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 your 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.