Screencast-o-matic is a free and versatile
tool to capture anything happening on your computer. The top way I see it used in education is
for faculty and students to create instructional lectures or do class presentation assignments
using Powerpoint with voice and/or video. So this is a quick tutorial on different setups
and a few tips for making polished screencaptures. A pro tip, if you are recording your desktop
or a web browser and don’t want the clutter of icons to show while recording, right click
on the desktop, select View, then uncheck Show Desktop Icons. You can add them back once you are done and
nobody's the wiser of how messy your desktop is! Alright back to Powerpoint. Open Screencast-o-matic
and click to RECORD. Start by setting the size. Remember, a Powerpoint goes full screen when
you start a slideshow, so set SOM to Full Screen capture. Another Pro Tip. You should be creating Powerpoints in widescreen
formats to fill modern screens, but you can capture older square format presentation with
the black borders. Next, Faculty on campus do not have time limits,
but for students using a free account you have up to 15 minutes of record time, which
is more than enough. For instructional focus and engagement most
presentations should be around 5 minutes. I recommend running through your presentation
at least once to make sure you can fit it to that time. Connect the webcam and/or microphone and check
the audio level. Last thing in settings, if your Powerpoint
has audio, plays a video, or has sounds you need to make sure computer audio is set to
record. Otherwise leave this off. Now open the Powerpoint and let’s look at
different ways to record. To record just a voice over Powerpoint you
will choose Screen capture only, then select the microphone. Start your Powerpoint wait for the countdown,
and then start doing the voice over the slides. You advance and navigate slides as you normally
would using arrow keys. You can always pause during recording and
start where you left off if needed. When complete click the pause button in the
corner, then click DONE. You can easily trim off any pauses at the
beginning and end by moving the bars, then Save as desired. If you want to include a web camera, after
the above initial setup select BOTH and a small preview window will appear. Select the webcam and position the window
where you will want it to start during recording. Don’t worry though, you can move the position
during the recording to make sure it is out of the way of the slide information. Also, the three buttons you see at the bottom
control how the web camera is presented during recording. Let’s do a quick sample. I will start my Powerpoint slideshow, and
wait for the count down. By default the webcam starts in the initial
position I set, but while recording I can move it around as needed. Using the buttons at the bottom, I can also
make the webcam the main focus in the center, or I can hide the webcam completely. I am going to stop the recording and let’s
review that. I started in the default position and then
moved the webcam window around in different positions. I used the webcam control buttons to make
it centered and dim the slide behind, then I completely hid the webcam. Pretty cool, right? How you use this is your choice, but I recommend
doing a few practice runs so you know where and how the webcam is positioned during the presentation. And remember you can record for each slide and pause between if you need, but you want to make sure things don’t start feeling choppy, so practice, practice, practice to make sure it does flow. And that is using screencast-o-matic to record
a Powerpoint in a nutshell. Have fun exploring your new found presentation
skill!
