Interested in recording a narrated slideshow of your lecture while you give it? Facilities Management has put Camtasia software in many of the lecture threatre computers. If you're using an MS Powerpoint slideshow for your lecture, you can launch this software and it will record your narration and slideshow as you lecture, then give you an AVI movie file at the end. You can then upload the movie to your WebCT or other teaching site and allow your students to download your lecture and relive the happy hours you've spent together as they revise (or catch up on the lectures they missed).
Read on for more info, a list of eqipped theatres, and details about our WebCT site "Using Multimedia in Online Teaching & Learning".
Easiest to tell by email:
Note! If you're interested in doing this, drop the usyd WebCT Helpdesk a line and ask to be put into our "Using Multimedia in Online Teaching & Learning" site. It has step-by-step instructions on using Camtasia and excellent examples of use in a teaching program provided by Jo Lander (SPH).
=================
Ross West wrote:
Hi all,
Can anybody help Michael Kennedy out below? Wants to know if any academics
are using Camtasia to record lectures and host the resulting .avi files
within WebCT?
Cheers,
Ross
----- Forwarded message from Michael Kennedy -----
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 11:20:52 +1100
From: Michael Kennedy
Subject: Camtsia files on web
To: Ross West
Dear Ross,
How are you going? I hope well.
We are using Camtasia in the Lecture Theatres and are interested in how many lecturers are uploading the saved .avi files to the web.
Do you know if any lecturers are doing this or of any way to find this out?
Kind Regards
Michael
Michael Kennedy
Audio Visual Technician
AudioVisual Services
Client Services
Information and Communications Technology
University of Sydney
=================
From: Bec Plumbe
Sent: Wednesday, 8 November 2006 3:59 PM
To: Michael Kennedy
Cc: Flexible Online Learning Team Staff
Subject: Re: [eLearn-Staff] Fwd: Camtsia files on web
Hi all,
Michael, I know that Public Health are using Camtasia to record lectures in a sense-- they do the narration in their offices, create a narrated slideshow using Camtasia + Powerpoint. The Educational Design team in Public Health (Jo Lander & team) save this in Flash (SWF) format and upload the resulting files to the appropriate Public Health site in WebCT.
We'd definitely prefer it if the lecture theatre machines could be set to save files as SWF by default: the results are still good, and the files are nice and small, suitable for online teaching use. The files can be zipped for student download if desired.
Personally I haven't come across any academics who've mentioned using the lecture theatre Camtasia facility, but of course that doesn't mean they're not using it and uploading it without needing to contact us. We could have a look for AVI files on our servers, but it would be a big job to look through and find out whether any were created by Camtasia.
One idea to get a feel for how many people were using the software (although uploading & using is something else) would be to have a VBscript or similar that recorded how often Camtasia was launched and how long it was left open for. It's a very rough measure, but it may at least give an indication of use attempts, which if collected over the course of a semester could also give a feel for how many lecturers stuck with using it.
We would be interested to know which lecture theatres have Camtasia installed on the computers-- can you give us more details? This could also help us identify which courses / lecturer groups may have used the software, if we were to try and identify if the results are being used in WebCT sites.
-bec
===================
Subject: RE: [eLearn-Staff] Fwd: Camtsia files on web
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:48:41 +1100
From: Michael Kennedy
To: Rebecca Plumbe
CC: Jason Wheatley
Dear Bec,
Thanks for your reply. It is good to know that there is some use of the Camtasia software. My understanding is that it is used in the Pharmacy Faculty as well.
Saving the files on the lecture theatre computer as flash files is not feasible as the rendering of the storyboard from the file recorded is time prohibitive. Camtasia saves files either as .avi or .camrec.
Only when the file is saved as a .camrec file can it be rendered to one of various formats including flash. Unfortunately this rendering process takes roughly half as long as recording the lecture. Ie an one hour lecture will take about half an hour to render to flash. This is prohibitive as it leads into the following lecture. Thus to obtain a useable file the .avi format was chosen as the default file to save to.
At the moment the theatres that have the capability to record audio to PC (as needed for Camtasia) are:-
Theatres that can record the Lapel Mic and Desktop
* Bosch Lecture Theatre 1
* Bosch Lecture Theatre 2
* Bosch Lecture Theatre 3
* Bosch Lecture Theatre 4
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 157
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 159
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 173
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 175
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 273
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 275
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 373
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 375
* Chemical Engineering Lecture Room 1
* Chemical Engineering Lecture Room 2
* Chemistry Lecture Theatre 1
* Chemistry Lecture Theatre 2
* Chemistry Lecture Theatre 3
* Chemistry Lecture Theatre 4
* Civil Engineering Lecture Room 1
* Civil Engineering Lecture Room 3
* Eastern Avenue Auditorium
* Eastern Avenue Lecture Theatre
* Education Lecture Room 424
* Education Lecture Theatre 351
* Electrical Eng Lecture Theatre 2 (Rm 450)
* Electrical Eng Madsen Theatre 351
* Farrell Lecture Theatre
* Footbridge Theatre
* Institute Lecture Room 2
* Institute Lecture Theatre 1
* Marjorie Oldfield Theatre (208a)
* Merewether Lecture Room 5 (Rm 277)
* Merewether Lecture Theatre 1 (Rm 131)
* Merewether Lecture Theatre 2 (Rm 136)
* Mills Lecture Room 209
* Norman Gregg Lecture Theatre
* Old Geology Lecture Theatre
* Peter Nicol Russell Lecture Theatre
* Pharmacy Lecture Theatre
* Physics Lecture Theatre 1
* Physics Lecture Theatre 2
* Physics Lecture Theatre 4
* Physics Lecture Theatre 5
* Quadrangle Building, General Lecture Theatre N205
* Quadrangle Building, History Room S223
* Quadrangle Building, Latin 1 S224
* Quadrangle Building, McRae Room S418
* Quadrangle Building, Oriental Room S204
* Quadrangle Building, Philosophy Room S249
* Quadrangle Building, Room S421
* School of Information Technology - Presentation Room
* Slade Lecture Theatre
* Teachers College Assembly Hall
* Wallace Theatre
This list will be increasing as we build more audiovisual systems. There is a plan to build 50 more systems in small to medium tutorial rooms over various Faculty and School spaces.
I hope to speak to the Desktop Support Team to create a way for us to find out how often the software is being used on each machine.
Again; thanks a lot for your reply.
Kind Regards
Michael
Comments
Is this technology available at Cumberland. I would love to use this if it is available.
Posted by: Jo Ragen | November 30, 2006 01:22 PM
Hi Jo,
I've just spoken to Jason from Audiovisual, and he says that Cumberland AV has just joined forces with them a few months ago (formerly the two groups were quite separate, I believe).
Jason says that there are indeed plans to extend this program to Cumberland campus. They hope to have a number of theatres / spaces ready to record for Semester 1, 2007. Not all spaces are suitable for recording-- the rule of thumb is that if the theatre has a lapel microphone, you should be able to to successfully record your lecture.
For more information, you could talk to your local AV guys, or contact Jason or Michael (under "Facilities" in the uni phone book).
Great to hear that people are keen to use the service!
-bec
Posted by: Bec Plumbe | December 1, 2006 12:56 PM