Screen Casting

First, here's a screencast example about how to make GIFs for tutorials. More on that after the video.

This is not everyone's comfort zone - that is for sure. But I love screen casting. It's not really about having my voice or face on the screen with whatever I'm demonstrating, but I'm someone who has had to troubleshoot computer issues for people for a long time. I learned (in no small part from Sal Khan's rationale for creating Khan Academy), that having a recording of a computer fix is a huge timesaver for people in the long run.

In his first TEDTalk, Khan talks about how creating videos to tutor his younger cousin in math meant that he could record himself teaching a concept one time. In creating an asynchronous online object, he gave her something to watch at her convenience, repeatable and at whatever speed best suited her learning style. He jokes that she began to prefer the recorded version of her cousin more than the real-life version.

"And once you get over the backhanded nature of that, there was actually something very profound there.They were saying that they preferred the automated version of their cousin to their cousin.At first it's very unintuitive, but when you think about it from their point of view, it makes a ton of sense.You have this situation where now they can pause and repeat their cousin, without feeling like they're wasting my time.If they have to review something that they should have learned a couple of weeks ago, or maybe a couple of years ago, they don't have to be embarrassed and ask their cousin.They can just watch those videos; if they're bored, they can go ahead.They can watch at their own time and pace." (Khan 02:10)

I have adopted this thinking when making technology tutorials for colleagues. I try not to overdo it with my commentary when possible, but it's helpful to have a human face explaining things every now and then so you don't just feel like you're leaning over someone else's shoulder watching their screen.

My next-level discovery for simplicity (and something I've even used for classmates in previous courses in this teacher librarian certification program) is the screen capturing power of an animated GIF. While you don't get sound or an on-screen face to walk you through what you're doing, it's a wonderfully simple looping format for quick explanations. It can be embedded into an HTML-based email or in a normally-static Google Doc or Google Sheets (like a powerpoint) for demonstration purposes. GIFs have really become a new cyberdialect on the internet. Ask any middle school student.

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Works Cited

Khan, Salman. “Let's use video to reinvent education.” TED, Mar. 2011, www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education/transcript. Transcript.