Screen Toaster
Thursday, May 13th, 2010What is this, and What is it good for?!
ScreenToaster is a web based service that allows you to create and host screen casts online. What, you might be asking, is a screen cast?! What a wonderful question. A screen cast captures your desktop as a video, and allows you to capture additional audio as voice over. “Huh?” If you’ve ever watched a video of computer screen with someone giving directions to you at the same time, you’ve seen a screen cast. ScreenToaster is a free tool that allows you to record and publish them online.
Alright, so what’s the big deal?
Well, now you can share anything you see on your computer with anyone else. The colloquialism goes that: seeing is believing. That is – it’s easier to deny an idea that’s abstracted, but much harder to deny concrete evidence that you can see. SceenToaster allows you to share what you’re seeing on your computer with someone else and deliver an audio commentary at the same time. Maybe that means that you want to narrate a slide show, or a powerpoint presentation; maybe you’d rather show some graphs and point out data consistencies (or inconsistencies). This is kind of like “show and tell,” but instead of sharing your favorite geode with just your classmates, you can now share anything you find on the internet with anyone who has an internet connection.
Head on over to:
Step 1:
Create a Screen Toaster Account
Step 2:
Sign-in
(Yeah, yeah, it’s obvious, but I gotta say it)
Step3:
Click Record
Just like with Viddler, you’ll be asked if it’s okay for the website to use your built in camera and microphone.
Click “Allow”
Step 4:
Upload to Screen Toaster, or YouTube…
Once you’re done recording you’ll be asked if you want to upload the video to Screen Toaster or YouTube. You can upload your video to either place, BUT if you’re going to send it to YouTube you’ll need an account there too.
Extra Credit:
Embed your video on a web page.
From the page with your video grab the “embed” code.
It should look something like this:
<object id=’stV0lVRk1IR19bQV1UWVhcUV5T’ width=’425′ height=’344′ type=’application/x-shockwave-flash’ data=’http://www.screentoaster.com/swf/STPlayer.swf’ codebase=’http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,115,0′><param name=’movie’ value=’http://www.screentoaster.com/swf/STPlayer.swf’/><param name=’allowFullScreen’ value=’true’/><param name=’allowScriptAccess’ value=’always’/><param name=’flashvars’ value=’video=stV0lVRk1IR19bQV1UWVhcUV5T’/></object><div style=’width: 425px; text-align: right;’><a href=’http://www.screentoaster.com/’>Capture your screen in seconds</a></div>
When you Edit your blog/webpage/google site/blackboard page, you’ll click on edit “HTML”
Paste that crazy long code into the page, and click “update.”
Then click “Save”
TaDa you’re done.
