Beyond Method #8: Capture your computer screen

[Bigger version of tutorial]

Is it weird that I got really excited about this exercise? I opted not to test either of the two cloud-based tools mentioned but rather try the free software, Wink. As much as I like cloud-based computing, I didn't want to have to create yet another account in order to share my tutorial.

Creating the tutorial was super fun. I watched Wink's own tutorial, which comes with the install, as a quick-start guide and then went barreling ahead. Because I don't have a mic, I chose to create a guide to how to put stuff on hold using the library catalog using a series of screengrabs with text boxes and arrows explaining what to do. Although it can definitely work with audio, Wink makes it very easy to add basic shapes and text boxes to your screen captures. I'm still confused as to when and how it pays attention to where your mouse moves but I got around it by making my tutorial predominantly about screengrabs rather than screencasts.

As mentioned in one of the readings, I had to be careful about privacy; I didn't actually want my account number showing and I opted not to show my actual holds.

Because of the interactivity, Wink exports as a SWF (Flash) file (rather than a video file), which has its pros and cons, the biggest challenge of which was actually embedding my finished product onto my blog. But with the help of this video tutorial, coupled with post, I was able to figure it out. It basically involved using Google Sites (putting my Google account to work once again) to host my SWF file (sadly, Google Docs did not work for this purpose, although I've done it before with videos) and then using the standard SWF-related HTML code and adjusting the dimensions to get it to show on my blog. (The original dimensions are somewhat bigger, which is why it seems distorted.)

While I definitely see video and Flash-based tutorials being useful for the library, they are very time intensive so I wonder how frequently we'd be able to create and publish them to the web.