What is Screencasting?

• Quickly communicate ideas or directions to your students: Have you ever had to repeat instructions or re-show a website or document because students missed what you said? With a screencast, those questions are eliminated. Your instructions are in the video, and you’ve just duplicated yourself when those questions come up. 
• Remind students of instructions: Students can refer back to the instructions if they forgot a due date, the grading process, or just to hear their assignment again. 
• Use to help you “flip” your classroom: Screencasting allows you to record high quality video presentations for students to view for homework, which allows teachers to use class time for more personalized learning. 
• Showcase student thought process or intentions: You can even have students create their own videos to help narrate their thought process or their intentions with work. English teachers, for example, could have their students verbally reflect on a piece of writing – essentially hold a writer’s workshop with themselves. You can listen to their self-evaluation and build on their analysis with your own feedback.

What is QuickTime?

• Free and simple: Comes pre-installed on your MacBook (no download required) 
• Easy to use: To create a new screen recording, open QuickTime, go to File > New Screen Recording in the QuickTime menu, select your options and begin recording.  
• Record all or part of your screen: Just click and drag the area you wish to capture and click the “Record” button. You can even set it to record "blips" (or visual cues) for every mouse click.  
• Easy to use recording settings: Click the arrow next to the “Record” button. If you don't want to record a voiceover or other audio, choose “None” as your microphone. If you want to show a black circle for every onscreen click, choose “Show Mouse Clicks” in Recording. To monitor audio while it's being recorded, use the volume slider. To stop recording, click the “Stop” button in the menu bar, or press Command-Control-Esc (Escape). 
• Choose an area to record: Select the area you wish to record and then click the “Start Recording” button within that area. 
• Downsides: Your video is captured in a compressed .mov file. That won't necessarily look bad for simple, straightforward projects, but the quality will get worse if you edit and then export, which compresses it again.  
• Editing options: QuickTime Player offers several options for editing your movie, including trim, split, cut/copy/paste/delete, and flip/rotate. Use the trim function to remove unwanted parts of your movie. Use the split function to split your movie into multiple sections that can be manipulated further.

Preparation for Screencasting

Before recording video, it is important to prepare your computer.

• Close all windows except the program being used. This helps your computer run more smoothly and removes all distractions for the user.
• Turn off all alerts that may make a sound or interrupt the flow of teaching.
• Make sure the microphone works. If a third party microphone is used, do a quick microphone check. External microphones reduce background noise and provide a higher quality voice recording.

Remember that when recording a tutorial, students cannot see what you are typing (although they may be able to hear it). If you are a pro with hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts, try to refrain from using them through the tutorial. This creates a better, less confusing learning experience for your students. If you do decided to use hotkeys, make sure you clearly explain or add subtitles for the shortcuts you use.

Recording with QuickTime

To use, open QuickTime. Then go to File > New Screen Recording. After you do this, a small window opens that looks like this. Clicking on the small white triangle (circled in red) gives you sound recording options. If you have a microphone, select it from the drop-down menu. You can also choose to use the internal microphone that is built into your computer. To change the recording settings, click the arrow next to the Record button. If you don't want to record a voice-over or other audio, choose “None” as your microphone. If you want to show a black circle for every onscreen click, choose “Show Mouse Clicks” in Recording. To monitor audio while it's being recorded, use the volume slider. 

When you are ready to record, click the “Record” button. This prompts the following popup message to open with instructions on how to use the recording function. Click anywhere on the screen to begin recording the entire screen. Or drag to select an area to record, then click the “Start Recording” button within that area. 

There are two recording options:

• Full Screen Recording: If you plan on teaching a topic that includes more than one program, recording the full screen is recommended so you have the capability to switch from one window to another without confusing the user. This option will record everything that is visible to you on the screen, including menu and time. To begin recording, just click anywhere on the screen once. 
• Partial Screen Recording: If the purpose of the screenshot recording is to give a tutorial on a specific software, then recording just the program may help reduce confusion. To activate, drag a selection rectangle over the designated part of the screen you wish to record. The box size and position cannot be altered once recording commences. Once you select your designated recording area, a button will pop up: start recording

When you click the "Start Recording" button, recording will begin. You will still be able to use your computer normally like when it is not recording, but only items within the selection box will be documented on your video. Partial screen recording looks like this:

Notice how everything outside of the selection box is darkened slightly? This is a great visual cue that is subtle and quite useful.

Once you are finished recording, you can press the escape key on your keyboard to prompt the camera options or click the Stop button located on the top menu bar. The screenshot below shows the location of the stop button. QuickTime automatically opens your recording for preview.

When you are happy with the recording, go to File -> Save. Now you are free to put it into a video editing software to add captions or graphics. Once you finish the editing, the final step is to upload it to YouTube or Vimeo, two of the most popular video hosting websites in the world.

Editing and Sharing with QuickTime

For information on how to edit and share videos in QuickTime, see the attached in-depth PDF.

Uploading to YouTube

For information on how to upload QuickTime videos to YouTube, see the attached in-depth PDF.

Sharing to Google Classroom

You can share QuickTime videos to Google Classroom easily when making an announcement, assignment, or question. Click "Add", then choose "File". Find the QuickTime recording on your computer and add it as a file.

More Information

• See the attached in-depth PDF
• Watch the video tutorial