The creation and distribution of a multimedia product via the web or on a CD can seem daunting to the inexperienced user. It is often assumed that the developer must have years of training and experience. It is also often assumed that you must utilize expensive and complicated software to produce and distribute such a product. It might never occur to you that a Librarian with very little technical experience might single-handedly tackle such a project. I have offered conference workshops to many individuals and ALL of them were producing video content within 30 minutes. That developed an immediate interest since they had the impression that creating multimedia tutorials would take days or weeks and most certainly require substantial IT support. After a very short “show-and-tell” , YOU will be ready to set off on your own to start developing materials. This session will introduce users to Camtasia™, a piece of software that is:
• Inexpensive
• Easy for a non-computer-science-user to learn its “basics“
• Useful to those wishing to produce multimedia learning modules
• Capable of more advanced features once the user is more experienced
• Flexible in that ALL SORTS of “presentations” can be produced including “PR” materials, web-tour productions, lab-based-recordings, software demonstrations, etc.
• Basically, if you can see it on a computer screen, you can narrate it and produce a CD-based or on-line presentation with little or no training.
We will discuss the necessary/advisable hardware, the appropriate computer skills, and we will see some typical examples of modules which have been developed utilizing this software. We will use Camtasia™ to actually create such a module during the paper session. If you are new to the concepts of developing such learning modules, this session is for you.
