Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Screenshots and screencasting with the Snagit extension

When explaining something computer-related, it is often helpful to capture either a still image of the screen (called a screenshot) or a video of the screen as you do your thing-- often recording your voice narration, as well (called a screencast).

I've mentioned various tools for doing this in the past, but I started using a new one recently, and I'd recommend it for two reasons:
  1. It's easy to use
  2. It automatically stores your screenshots and screencasts in Google Drive for easy sharing.
I made a how-to video. Here's an index so you can skip ahead if desired:

0:00 What is screencasting?
0:55 Signing into Chrome
1:45 Starting up Snagit
2:18 Granting permissions for Snagit
3:00 Capturing screenshots (still images)
4:24 Capturing screencasts (video of the screen)



For those who prefer the short and sweet written steps:
  1. Sign into Chrome
  2. Click the SnagIt Extension (white S in a blue square)
  3. Grant the necessary permissions
  4. Click the extension again 
  5. Use the sidebar menu to take screenshots and screencasts
  6. These are automatically saved in Google Drive for sharing 
(full disclosure on the video above-- I didn't actually use the extension itself to make the video, because I demo it in the video.  You can't use a camera to take a picture of itself !).

No comments:

Post a Comment