1)

When I reviewed the assignment for this week, sheer panic took over. Then after reviewing all the tutorials on www.screencast-o-matic.com I felt a little relieved. The next tutorial reviewed from Professor Lease’s, and this one helped to pull it all together. This is one of those things that I had to get to website and navigate through a lot. I can easily record, stop, and erase after recording myself narrating. I use Microsoft online. I had a lot of trouble using PowerPoint Online, and trying to record by voice while using the slideshow view. This is impossible using the online version of PowerPoint. I had to click on “open in PowerPoint,” on the upper right hand side of my PowerPoint viewing area of the presentation. The computer asks if you want to switch apps. One must click “yes,” and it will bring you to the version used on the desktop. Before finding this out, I had a lot of trouble recording. The Screencast-O-Matic control board would completely disappear. This became very frustrating, and almost had me in tears. Finding out that PowerPoint online had to be changed to the regular PowerPoint used for the desktop was my saving grace. I was even able to record using the webcam. After saving the video, I could not find it but knew it was somewhere. On the top of the screen I clicked “for education.” This will lead to a different screen layout. There is an option for “my videos,” that is located next to your account e-mail address. After clicking on “my videos” this will bring one to all the videos saved. Downloading and installing was easy. I have a new laptop so on the upper right hand side of the screen are 3 dots. I clicked on that, then clicked on “pin this task to the toolbar.” It puts a little icon on the bottom of the computer. This icon acts as a direct link to the website. I use this for Aspen University’s Classroom, Aspen’s student portal, Microsoft online, and any other important places I need to get to quickly with a click of a button. I do have a question for you all. What does Professor Lease mean when she wrote “this can not be a voice over PPT?” My understanding is screencast is a PPT with voice recorded as a narrator, but what is voice over PPT? Does she mean we need to record our face as well? 

2)

When I found out what the discussion question was going be for this week I was shaking in my boots. I thought to myself, here we go with something else I’ve never heard of and one more thing in life I must try and figure out. But to my surprise, with a little patience and not thinking it was the end of the world I was able to look up Screencast-o-matic with very few complications. Finding the website was easy. Looking at it for the first time I thought surly its not going to be as easy as logging in, but it was. The steps to recording wasn’t as bad a thought also. I tried to do it on my own but found later that it would have been best if I took the tutorial. After watching the tutorial, I was able to record the words on my first two slides. It was nice to learn to choose the section that I wanted to be heard within the PowerPoint. I must admit, I thought I sound quite crazy. The first thing I said was “wow is this what I sound like”. Then I quickly hit stop. After regrouping, I was couldn’t figure out how to get the screencast onto the PowerPoint. After playing around with it for a while and calling for help, I was able to set things up the way it needed to be presented. I don’t think the task of getting the screencast together was hard. I just think it was one more thing new that I had to become aware of, and we all know newness can be scary. I’m still having some trouble with the upload. Sometimes it worked for me and other times it didn’t. I’m sure if I go into it again when I have more time it will be fine. In the end it turned out to be not as bad as I thought it was. I admit that I didn’t know anything about screencast. Preparing those two slides were great. It was nice to learn something different and how other things beside graphs and pictures can be added to a PowerPoint. I look forward to seeing how my final presentation will turn out.

200 words for each response