A free screencast and whiteboard app for iPad

Came across this reasonably new iPad app: PageSend. It is free and does two important jobs very well.

1. It's a very nice screencast  app. It supports  writing/typing/drawing, provides choice of colors and line thickness and allows multi-page boards. The only downside is that it is not integrated with Dropbox -- the finished product can be emailed or viewed at pagesend.com


2. It's a great whiteboard app. You need to create pagesend.com account(s) then you and any other users you invite can use your iPads as a common whiteboard in real-time. Multiple users can write simultaneously. 

Screencast software for your laptop

While the screen session recording using online apps is great for quick one-offs, if you plan to produce many sessions, it may be easier to have the software installed on your laptop. Here's the best software for screencasting.

Windows 7

 

The best free one seems to be CamStudio (open source). It's got tons of features, which is either a plus if you are a tweaker, or a minus if you want something super simple.

Jing gets good reviews. Free version limits recordings to 5 minutes. Paid version is $15/year.

Wink is another well-liked app with no "catch".

Mac: Ok, gloat away. If you have MacOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or later, your can record using QuickTime X (quick tutorial on this)

Linux: Istanbul is the top choice here.

Online apps for screencasts: screenr vs screencast-o-matic

This is a quick comparison between the free versions of screenr and screencast-o-matic.  

screenr.com, 5-min limit, must register using one of Google/Facebook/Twitter/Yahoo/LinkedIn/WindowsLiveID accounts, must save first to screenr.com and then can download mp4 file or post to YouTube.

screencast-o-matic.com

15-min limit, do not have to save to screencast-o-matic site, export to YouTube or download file (choice of mp4, flv, avi, or animated gif formats).

Winner: screencast-o-matic.com

Recording a lesson on your iPad

The task at hand is as follows: use the iPad as you would a whiteboard in a classroom and record your writing and your voice while you are doing it. Here's a 20-second example of this task accomplished with Explain Everything app:

In the PC/Mac/Online world, screencasting is a recording of anything you do on your computer screen. I have not seen a true screencasting app for the iPad. The existing apps restrict the recording to user actions within the screencasting app itself. In contrast, on a computer, a screencasting app can record a user interacting with any computer program, such as a PowerPoint presentation, a movie on the Web, a Microsoft Word document, etc. A post on creating screencasts online appears here.


The best of the available "screencasting" apps for the iPad is Explain Everything ($3). Here's the app's description on iTunes:

"Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design tool that lets you annotate, animate, and narrate explanations and presentations. You can create dynamic interactive lessons, activities, assessments, and tutorials using Explain Everything's flexible and integrated design. Use Explain Everything as an interactive whiteboard using the iPad2 video display. 


Explain Everything records on-screen drawing, annotation, object movement and captures audio via the iPad microphone. Import Photos, PDF, PPT, XLS, RTF from Dropbox, Evernote, Email, iPad photo roll and iPad 2 camera. Export MP4 movie files, PNG image files, PDFs and share the .XPL project file with others for collaboration."

You can start with a blank whiteboard, a photo, a Powerpoint presentation, a PDF file, etc. You can then talk while doing any of the following: draw freehand, draw shapes, type, zoom in/out, edit/erase/rearrange objects, insert photos. At the end, you can export the screencast as a movie to upload to YouTube, your blog, your website, etc. It is well-integrated with Dropbox, both for import and for export, as well as many other popular services.


If you need a free app, Screenchomp, Showme, and Educreations are very similar to each other and very good. The limitation with all three is that you can only write freehand but not type.  

Screencasting

A screencast is a video capture of the actions on a user's computer screen, usually with accompanying audio commentary. It is a quick and easy way to explain anything that can be displayed on a computer screen. There are a number of online tools that are free and need no software installation.