How can I make a great screencast?

Introduction

Hello, my name is Nicholas Walker. I'm the creator of the Virtual Writing Tutor.

Like most people, I find creating screencasts to be a daunting prospect. I am never 100% sure how to structure my talk.

Even though I'm not an expert at screen-casting, I have been making screencasts for about 8 years now.

I have made dozens of screencasts and some of my screencasts have been viewed thousands of times.

My goal today is to show you how to make a high quality screencast script that will get you thousands of views on YouTube, as well.

So, stay right there, and get ready to follow this step-by-step tutorial.

You'll be amazed at how easy it is to write a top-notch script using the tool that I am going to show you.

The Problem

The big problem with making a screencast is that it has to compete with thousands of other videos on YouTube on the same or similar topics. So in addition to useful content, your screencast has to be well-structured, error-free, with correct pronunciation to stand out.

When viewers encounter a poorly developed talk with errors, they are more likely to click away and watch something else.

For example, you might forget to include or fully develop an element of your talk. Equally, you might conjugate your verbs incorrectly or mispronounce words.

But don't worry. I promise to show you how to use the Virtual Writing Tutor's Screencast Script Creator to maximize your impact. It will help you develop and organize your script and help you to eliminate grammatical and pronunciation errors at the same time.

The Quest

First, open your browser. Type the URL Virtual Writing Tutor dot com into the address bar and hit "Enter." If you typed the URL correctly, you will see this page.

At the top of the screen, you will see a logo and the navigation menu. On the right hand side, you can see the link to login. Once you have logged in, in the middle of the navigation bar, there is a drop-down menu with the words "Writing Tools." On that list you will see the words "Screencast Script Creator." Click the link.

The Solution

At the top of the page you'll see three buttons. The first button says video tutorial. The second button says "Examples." The third button says Screencast-O-Matic. Click on Screencast-O-Matic to download free software to record your screen.

Under these buttons, you'll see an input box and a submit button labelled "New Script." Type in the name of your screencast. I recommend using the question that you intend to answer. Many people type questions into Google Search and YouTube, so we want your screencast to appear at the top of the search results with an exact match when they do.

After you have given your script a title, click on the edit icon for each section and add a few sentences. Click on the examples bar to open an accordion section and see examples. Click on the Check Grammar button to check your text for spelling and grammar errors. Click "Check Target Structures" to get a count of the types of words and expressions the system expects you to use. Click "Save" to close the pop-up box and save your text to the database.

At the bottom of each section of your screencast, click "Generate MP3" for get the system to use speech synthesis to generate an MP3 of the text you have added.

After you have filled in all of the sections and generated MP3s, click "Check." The system will run all of your text through the grammar checker at once to make sure you have eliminated all of your errors.

Click "Statistics" to get the system to count your words and estimate your speaking time by adding the lengths of all of the MP3s you have generated together.

Click "Publish" to publish a copy of your screencast script on the Virtual Writing Tutor website. You can now record yourself reading your script to import it into your screen-casting software like Screencast-o-matic or Camtasia Studio.

Click "iFrame" to generate the code to show a window with your published screencast script on your blog or another website. An IFrame (Inline Frame) is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website. The IFrame HTML element is often used to insert content from another source. When you embed a YouTube video on a blog, you'll use an iframe.

Click "HTML" to generate the HTML code you can use to display your screencast script with MP3s and video on your blog or Moodle course.