Screencasts

This is my review of two screencast tools that can be used in the classroom or library. They both offer free recordings without downloading anything to your computer. You will have to signup in order to save your screencast recordings to your computer and publish them to various social networks like twitter, YouTube, Facebook and such. They are both similar in appearance on their recording frame but it ends there. The following are my findings and screencasts created with each.

Screenr  was simple once I got past the problems with Java on my computer. For some reason or other they had certificates that were not trusted. I had to turn off all my security settings and suites to access the recordings. Once I started though, it was pretty easy with no problems and I could easily download it to my computer to upload. I like mostly that I could move the frame by clicking and dragging the center of the frame. It was also a little like cutting and pasting what you wanted to display. Last, I couldn't find a time limit for the free version and it saves it to their website for future use. 

Screencast-o-matic had no problems and I could get started immediately by just pressing the "Start Recording" button. It offered automatic volume for the microphone so I didn't have to adjust anything or worry about noise reduction. Even the frame size could be adjusted to include full screen, HD and other set sizes. It was also easy to upload to my computer, YouTube, and Screencast-o-matic. The downside is it only offered 15 minutes of free screencast time and then you would have to delete the previous one to begin a new screeencast.

I realize that both screencasting tools offer similar functions but I would suggest Screenr for teens to adult and Screencast-o-matic for students. My reasoning is this, Screencast-o-matic offers very easy settings for students so that they do not have to make a lot of adjustments. Everything can be easily set to automatic preferences. whereas Screenr does not. It does however offer teens to adults to manipulate what they want to screencast and save them to the website with no restrictions on time.