Blog : Capture tools, Screencasting and Audio

Tool: Jing

Website: www.techsmith.com

Rating: 

Jing is a free screen capture application that allows you to capture screenshots and create videos. Jing allows you to screenshot the desired area, record a video from your desktop or clipping a running video. It works on Platforms such as Windows, Mac desktop.

Usage

Jing can be used very conveniently in education. It can be used to capture what you see, you can initiate a capture by clicking Jing’s happy, always-ready “”sun”” icon…or pressing a hotkey of your choice. You can capture a window, pane, or region. (Tip: click and drag to select a region.) It ca be used to make a point if you need to emphasize or explain you can mark up your screenshot with a basic text box, arrow, highlight, or rectangle. Finally, it can be used to share instantly with Jing you can decide where to send the screenshot and it’s there and ready to share. When you send to a destination like Screencast or Flickr, Jing even places a hyperlink on your clipboard.

Review

Jing is quite easy to access and operate. It works with a sun-shaped icon with three spires. The lower left one lets you capture anything on your screen. The middle one looks at your capture history and the right one pulls up options. Jing’s attractive application takes a sound, simple approach to capturing, it begins by dragging the X and Y axis to define your capture field and then take a still or start a recording. When you’re done, save it to your computer or upload it to the site you want to share with. Making a screen capture, still image or video is always done with the help of a grid. Clicking and dragging X and Y axis will cause the entire desktop to turn grey and only the area captured will still be coloured. The resulting video (of five minutes or less) can be saved in SWF format or stored on Screencast. Sharing the link to the stored version pulls up a new window with a Flash video on it. This video can be watched on this screen, but you can’t embed the video itself anywhere else. Finally Jing compares quite favourably with such software as SnagIt as Jing is free and SnagIt only offers a free trial before demanding payment.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Notability

Website: www.gingerlabs.com

Rating: 

Notability is a comprehensive note taking app. It gives users the ability to create new notes, sketch ideas, annotate PDFs, mark-up photos, record lectures and provide audio feedback. There is no free version of software. User is obligated to pay 5.99$ for an app.

Usage

Users can create notes, which can be typed, drawn, handwritten, photographed, recorded as audio, or copied from a web page. Notability automatically syncs and backs up notes using cloud based storage. Additionally, notes can be shared to other via email, AirDrop, Twitter, Dropbox, Google Drive, DropBox.

Review

Notability is design for Mac and available for iPad and iPhone. The application requires access to the Internet for sync with iCloud and sharing the created notes.
With Notability user can create notes that integrate handwriting, typing, drawings, audio, and pictures. Tool lets to prepare lecture notes and other classroom materials. Notability can also be used to annotate PDF documents, such as student assignments and PDF forms.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Ferrite recording studio

Website: www.ferriterecordingstudio.com

Rating: 

Ferrite Recording Studio is an iOS multitrack audio editor which allows for the recording and editing of audio. Educators can use this tool easily to create podcasts and as well as promoting it to students to recording lectures.

Usage

Ferttie recording studio was designed to be aid podcasts, lecture recordings, and audio presentations by incorporating into this tool such as bookmarking, automatic ducking, and silence removal. This allows users to enhance their audio with extras like dynamic compression or filtering and also to add cover art, show notes or lyrics, and share your projects as standard AAC files or via popular such as email, iCloud or Dropbox. It is a tool that is easily downloaded and efficient to use and gives educators a platform to introducing audio as learning tool very easily.

Review

“If you are looking for a lot of control over your final audio podcast, you might want to take a look at the Ferrite Recording Studio app. It includes a multi-track editor that lets you mix multiple tracks together and many other useful features. Some effects are only available with an in-app purchase, but many of the things you would like to be included for free (like automatic ducking) are available for no cost. You can split, trim, move and delete tracks as appropriate, as well as fade in/out or crossfade between tracks. Finished recordings can be exported to a number of services or saved to the Camera Roll as a video.”

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Camtasia

Website: www.camtasia.com

Rating: 

Camtasia is used to create video tutorials and presentations. One of its main points is that you can screencast or direct record your presentations. In addition, you can edit your videos and audios. There are different prices for Windows and Mac. In Windows it costs 272 euro and 136 euro for each upgrade. The Mac OS version costs 90 euro and approximately 45 euro to upgrade.

Usage

Camtasia allows the user to record their screen by selecting the area desired. This technology its quite easy to use but has so many options that it is difficult to master. After recording your video, you can edit it by using advanced techniques and features. In addition, the user can improve the sound of the music or the narration.

Review

To use this tool, you have to install it. The process of installation its quite simple. The Camtasia output can be a video in different formats, such as mp4 audio files such as mp3. Overall it’s a tool probably best suited to the tech savvy.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Podbean

Website: www.podbean.com

Rating: 

Podbean is an easy and efficient free tool available for educators to start podcasting. Podbean allows users to create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Its user-friendly interface allows anyone to upload, publish, manage and promote their podcasts in just a few steps. Podbean is  supported in devices such as, Desktop Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, IOS and Android making it a tool that is widely applicable to users on different platforms.

Usage

Educators can create their podcasts and share them with students and colleagues.  For example, classroom sites can be created and students will have easy access to the podcasts that teachers make available in relation to relevant topics. Podbean’s website contains many featured as well as popular podcasts by experts from around the world.

Review

“Ultra simple podcast publishing solution. Unlimited bandwidth and storage. Everything a podcaster needs to host, promote, and track your podcast.”-Web Wiki

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Screencast-O-Matic

Website: www.screencast-o-matic.com

Rating: 

ScreenCast-O-matic is video and audio screen capture software that can be used to create video from your screen (i.e. short lectures or course tours), that can be used online or downloaded and installed. (Note that the online version does not work well on Mac computers so it’s advisable to download) There are both free and subscription versions of this program. The subscription service, which costs 15euro/year, allows you to directly upload videos to Google Drive Drop Box and other cloud based storage facilities – in the free version you have to do it manually. The paid version has a wider range of tools including the ability to record webcam footage of yourself to embed in the screen cast, which could be useful for online teachers. The program operates on Windows and Mac and requires an updated Java plugin. For this review, I operated the program from a PC with Windows 7.

Usage

When users first visit the Screencast-O-Matic site, it can be difficult to navigate. The information is presented in a somewhat scattered way and is not linked very well. Simply recording videos, however, is straight forward. The website’s home page links directly to a two-minute instructional video that has all the information one might need to create a basic video very quickly. If the user has an updated Java plugin installed on his or her computer, he or she could easily record a video within five minutes of visiting the site’s homepage. Downloads, registration, and user accounts are not required, though there is an option to download the application to your computer.

Overall screen-cast-o-matic is a diverse and useful tool available to educators. Especially considering that the free features include such as screen and webcam recording, easy publishing features to YouTube as well as features that allow for the smooth transition from recording the screencast to saving as a video file. Then for those who are using the pro version they will have access to such feautres as recording software for computer audio, edit tools, draw and zeem, publishing features to Gogle Drive, Vimeo, Dropbox and a screenshot tool.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: iPadio

Website: www.ipadio.com

Rating: 

Review IPadio is a tool that offers an easy and fast way to create and share audio. It is used via a free app to record, edit, and upload audio to the web.

Usage

The ipadio app lets you record up to 60 minutes of high quality audio and then add titles, descriptions, images, and geo-locate your recording before uploading to a pre-created ipadio.com account or cross-posted to a classroom Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Blogger, Live Spaces, or LiveJournal accounts. Ipadio is useful for a number of different classroom settings, however it is most useful for being used as a tools for recording and uploading podcasts.

Review

“There are a number of reasons this app is useful. These are

1. Generous length for each recording
2. Easy to post (all or) selected recordings to an e-portfolio on WordPress or Blogger
3. Easy to embed manually in Edmodo, for example
4. Teachers can follow students, although this needs improving
5. Teachers (and students) can easily add constructive comments.”- Android user

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Audacity

Website: www.audacityteam.org

Rating:

Audacity is a free and open source cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds. It is a free piece of software which requires a desktop PC or laptop to use in order to create the final output which are audio clips.

Usage

Desktop based application, with many options around the Graphical User Interface GUI (menus, toolbars, etc.). Options are well classified and quite intuitive to find. Although it has many options, the learning curve should be short due to its limited focus (sounds recorder/editor).

Review

“After sampling a few audio programs, I found Audacity to be the bestfree program available to create audio samples. The program allows you to do so much more than simply record narration and music. I am impressed with how much editing can be done within the program. When I first used it, I had not used any audio programs so it was a little daunting, but after about an hour, I was able to navigate most of the tools. I have used the program to create a project where students must incorporate 6 sound effects (splash, horn, crickets.etc.) into an original 1 minute story. For that project, Audacity is the best platform”.- Ed Shelf Review

Tool Evaluation