Here’s our first attempt at an Oscar http://www.vimeo.com/1358140
We’re working on a clearer view of the screen but you get the ‘gist’

Appreciate your feedback

Sue and Kathreen
Moodle Support
University of Victoria

I do accept there is a lot of value in demonstrating through the screens how to do tasks. I have used a few of these, and sometimes they just still take to long to get to the point… maybe the problem is screencasts are made en masse trying to provide information for all audiences… text I can skim and get to the exact point I need.

@May Dude- whats your point? It ain’t my photo and iss just a metaphor. Dude….

Maybe these ‘atomized’ screencasts (to steal a term from Atomic Learning) will satisfy your discriminating palate a little better. I made them for my data-driven decision-making students (educators who want to be principals or superintendents). They seem to really like them…

1) isn’t this a subset of a general “problem” with technical communication? From manuals to textbooks to how-tos to you-name-it, there’s a lot of boring stuff out there

2) I did a series of screencasts about some aspects of del.icio.us. In the first I purposefully went with a very dry, just-the-facts-ma’am approach, essentially acting like a live technical manual. In the second I tried to be a bit different, make it more fun– the students have vastly preferred the first! Making me reflect that perhaps I’m not only not very entertaining, but maybe length and getting to the point matter more.

3) Need often trumps aesthetics. If something is unimportant, optional, or just of personal interest, then I’m quick to turn it off– whether screencast or television show or movie– or put it down if it’s a book or web site. But if I *need* it– and students are not typically desire-based users– I’ll put up with a lot more… I might even find the rest of the frippery annoying when what I want is the information, the technique, the understanding.

Yeah, screencasts are usually pretty boring, totally agreed. The problem is the rapid development mentality that supports the use of screencasts.

Building and publishing a screencast is faster and cheaper that writing support documentation. Therefore, organizations cut the corner by putting the tool in the hands of the subject matter experts and instructional technologists, asking them to produce “multimedia” web content.

Not a lot of time is spent on building a scenario, adding interaction, adding a support character, putting in dialogs, use cases or real-life scenarios, etc.

Just because a tool which has a lot of potential is put into the hands of people doesn’t mean the results will be spectacular. Look at Photoshop for instance…