The Beginning of My Practicum

I am finally starting my practicum for my graduate degree in Online Teaching and Instructional Design.  The focus of my practicum will be to create user-friendly tutorials for designing projects within Camtasia 8 Studio.  Camtasia 8 Studio is a software that was developed for creating videos and presentations directly using screen-cast.  It can also be used as a direct recording plug-in to Microsoft PowerPoint.

My first task was to familiarize myself with the software and make a video that instructs the user on how to take a screenshot using Camtasia.  The actual process of taking a screenshot on Camtasia is pretty straight forward.  However, my first attempt at making a video within Camtasia was somewhat challenging due to some technical issues on my end.

I was able to take and edit the video without too much difficulty.  The problem was that I did not realize my speakers had not been plugged in since we changed the layout of our office.  I spent around 45 minutes trying new options within Camtasia to add sound to my video.  After recording my video, I played it back and there was no sound.  There is an audio record option in Camtasia so I thought I might be able to start the video recording and the audio recording at the same time.  This did not work because when I started the audio recording, my video would play straight through without letting me stop the video.  I finally realized the speakers were unplugged!  With the speakers plugged in, I was able to make more progress. 

Once the video was completed I added Closed Captions as an option.  The speech to text function is not the best in the world.  I corrected all the errors of the speech to text and saved my first project on Camtasia.  I converted the video into a MP4 format so that I could send it to my professors.  Having spent some time exploring Camtasia, it seems to be an excellent way to make videos and I am excited to learn more.

The video tutorial on taking a screenshot in Camtasia 8 Studio is below.