Easy Training Videos with Camstudio

As I mentioned a few days ago, one of the cool tools I learned about at this year's Michigan Library Association conference was camstudio.org -- an open source ware that is, as, its website says: "able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)."

I downloaded camstudio one day last week at work and started playing with it. It is a great tool! I have already made two staff training videos -- one of which we are actually using -- and I just made my first training video for the public on how you can log into your Library accounts on our website to check your holds, renew your material, etc.

Camstudio is quick to download, and simple to learn. Though I am no Fellini, nor Antonioni, nor even Roman Polanski, I was quickly able to make pretty good 2 or 3 minute videos.

Here's the one I made for the public. Click on the picture of our web site and turn up your volume. Take a look and let me know what you think.

The only drawback is that the video files are huge. However, I used another site I learned about at the conference to store the 50+ mg videos in the clouds: drop.io.

Cool Technology Tools from Kalamazoo

I am in Kalamazoo, for the Michigan Library Association Annual Conference, always a worthwhile event.

This afternoon, I attended an excellent workshop – Tech Tools for Reference – presented by Holly Hibner, from the Salem-South Lyon District Library, and Christine Tobias, from Michigan State University Libraries.

Hibner’s presentation, directed toward public libraries, was especially interesting to me. She presented twelve Web 2.0 – free – technologies that all librarians should incorporate into our tool chest.

Take a look at these:

Delicious.com – a social bookmarking site and one of The Tech Desk’s favorites.

Twitter.com – a microblog, and another of our favorites.

LinkBunch.com – put multiple links into one short link can be sent easily via text message, IM or email.

Drop.io – drop files that are too big to email onto this site and share them via a variety of outputs.

Meebo.com – chat across platforms, with no software download required.

Scribd.com – publish and share doc, xls, pdf, txt, and Open Office files with the world.

Slideshare.net – publish and share your presentations with the world. To view this workshop’s presentation using slideshare, go to www.slideshare.net/hhibner.

Camstudio.org – create AVI files by recording screen and audio activity on your computer.

Googlelittrips.com – an experiment in teaching literature, by using Google Earth to help students discover where in the world the greatest road trip stories of all time took place.

Cueprompter.com – turn your computer into a teleprompter.

Readthewords.com – create an audio file out of text.

Zamzar.com – convert files without needing special software.

The coolest of these? It has to be googlelittrips.com. Follow the journey of John Steinbeck’s Joad family from The Grapes of Wrath.

What do you think?