Well, it was real, it was fun, and it was real fun... but it wasn't REALLY, REALLY fun. I enjoyed learning how to do screencasts, but this "thing" probably took me the longest of all because of all the trouble shooting I had to work through. I first downloaded GoView because it seemed so quick, easy, and visually pleasing to the eye. But then I was stuck. I had previously read in Vaughn's post that Jing was the only one that seemed to work for her (of the ones she tried), so I tried that next. It was really easy to use, but I couldn't get the sound to work so it took a while for me to figure out that my internal microphone wasn't turned on. (If you have this problem go to My Computer, Control Panel, Sounds and Audio Devices, click the Audio tab, click the Volume button under Sound Recording, then select Internal Microphone). Sigh. And for some weird reason I had to keep going back to turn on the internal mic over and over again (the setting would default back or something with logging in and out). After that I got excited and decided that I was going to do a screencast of a "Technology Tip of the Week" I previously sent out to my teachers (how to turn off the default setting so email notifications do not pop-up on your computer screen when giving presentations). This required me to switch back and forth from two different screens to do it, and after I recorded it, it would only show a tiny rectangle of the screen when played. I FINALLY figured out that one of the screens had to be minimized on top of the other one (if that makes any sense), and then it finally worked. Then because I am such a perfectionist, I had to re-shoot my screencast like 10 times. Well, I thought the hard part was over until I tried to post it to my blog (or share it). I changed the share settings to allow it go provide an embed code, but every time I would record and try to get the code, it would give me an error message. Grrrrrrr! I kept trying to shoot other things to see if I could get a code, and occasionally something would work. I finally just walked away from this over night and tried messing with it again today. In frustration I tried ScreenCastle but again I got stuck, and I didn't feel like learning a new program since I had already messed with Jing for so long. SO, I uninstalled Jing and tried to reinstall it to see if that worked. When I tried to reinstall it, I kept receiving an error message from SBISD!!! WHY, WHY WHY??? I didn't have this issue the first time! Then I figured it all out. I was logged into the district when I tried to install Jing the second time. After I logged out of SBISD it installed fine. Then I figured out that the reason it wouldn't give me an embed code is because I was trying to record a screencast from Outlook, which required me to be logged into the district. I finally just decided to try a screencast using Meriwether (logged out of SBISD) and it worked! It worked! It worked! I thought to myself that I am not going to be a perfectionist anymore, I'm done! ...until I replayed my screencast from my blog and it had no sound. Yes, I had to go back AGAIN and select the internal mic! I think I deserve 4 more credit hours for this one!!! :-) I wonder if anyone else has had this issue using Jing on their district laptop? I think this is a great tool for people to use to demonstrate things on Teacher Tube, etc., and students would have a ball using this for presentations! I think I could use it for the future Technology Tips I send out to my teachers, but an email just might prove to be less time consuming for me. I may have leave this job to the Atomic Learning folks. For what it's worth, see below... Okay, I just watched my screencast after posting, and it only shows half the screen. I think I am just going to move on now.
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