Video Tutorials - 
A Beginners Guide
Part of Online teaching is the ability to provide instructions to your
students.
One way that I have experimented with is the use of Video
Tutorials.
There is a free application called CamStudio (http://camstudio.org/)
This application will allow you to capture all or part of your computer screen and record it to a windows video file (.avi format).
You have the option to record sound through your microphone if you wish.
This is a really great tool to play with, and there is no cost involved.
Enjoy playing with it!
What do I do with my video now?
So now you have recorded your video tutorial and are not sure what to do with it. You have a couple options.
- Set it as a download from your website
- Stream it to your user
Option 1 is probably the easiest, just upload it to your site, and make a link to it, like this.
My Video
or if you want to get "fancy" you can make a button for the link.
Even
though it is easy, there are some serious drawbacks. When a user
clicks on the link, it will proceed to download the video to their
computer and play it in the associated windows media player.
This file is 32MB
in size. If your user is on dialup it will take 1/2 hour to
download it before it starts playing, even if the user is on high speed
internet access it will take a bit of time. Go ahead and try it.
Other
than the time it may take to download, there is the platform
compatibility issue. This is a windows .avi file, and may not
play on a mac or linux computer. This is NOT platform independent.
These disadvantages bring us to our Streaming Option.
Streaming video has two very good advantages.
- Platform independent (i.e. Mac, PC or Linux)
- Is viewed in "real time", that is Streaming, therefore now downloading
To
effectively stream video you need a server to stream it from. Of
course you could set up such a system, but why bother when someone else
has done it for you.
Welcome to YouTube
YouTube is probably the best known video streaming website on the planet.
As an education professional it is a great tool for you to utilize.
Plus the price is right ---- Free!
YouTube videos are platfom independent because of the Flash Video technology that they use.
The
first time someone goes to YouTube they may be asked to download the
browser plugin, but it only needs to be downloaded once, and never
again. These Flash videos will run in virtually any web browser.
Go
there and get your own account. It can be customized and there
doesn't seem to be a limit on the number of videos you can have.
The only limitations I have noticed is the video cannot be greater than 10 minutes or larger than 1024MB in size.
The
only real disadvange other than size (you don't need clips longer than
10 minutes anyways) is that the resolution of the video after you
upload it, and YouTube encodes it is not the greatest. Well, you
get what you pay for. Bandwidth is NOT cheap, and if you want
higher resoulution you will need to go with a paid streaming server.
I have an account set up, and customized my own channel.
TheTeachingBox
So go to You Tube, set up an account, and upload your video.
Now that you have a streaming video server at your disposal we can investigate the ways to fully utilize it.
As before the Link is the easiest way.
My YouTube Video or the button 
There is a much better way...embed it.
If you look to the right of the video you uploaded you will see a summary information box.
In the box will be some code just below the word Embed. Copy this code to your webpage, and the video will appear in your page as it does above.
Summary
Adding Video Tutorials to your toolbox is an effective and easy way to help your students when teaching online.
The software to get started - CamStudio (http://camstudio.org/) is Free and relatively straightforward to use.
The best delivery method is through a Streaming Media Server - YouTube is free and easy to set up.
This Beginners Guide should get you started at no cost.
There are many other tools that can do a better job, but this Beginners Guide should get you started at No Cost.
Just your time to experiment.
Now -
Go Forth and Experiment with your new found knowledge.