Before GC Fielder Fiedler left this comment, I’d never even heard of ScreenSteps, a software application for creating tutorials like the one Cory Bohon wrote on screencasting.
Cory was sitting next to me in my office as he created the tutorial, so I can say that I’m pretty sure Cory was just first taking screenshots with the built-in function that Mac OS X provides for doing so and then pasting by hand the necessary tags for those images into the HTML of his tutorial. That’s how I’ve done tutorials like that, too.
But holy moley is ScreenSteps much, much easier! Once I heard about ScreenSteps I decided to download the trial version, and once I tried the trial version I decided to plunk down the $40 to purchase the standard version. (Later, I figured out that the academic pricing is cheaper: $34. D’oh!)
It’s not perfect, and I wish there were a few options that it doesn’t currently have, but I’ve already found it incredibly useful for creating quick tutorials that supplement (not replace!) my in-class instruction. Here are two drafts of tutorials-in-progress that I created using Screensteps:
- “Finding a meeting time with Doodle.com,” for my students, my colleagues, and just about anyone
- “Academic OneFile: an advanced search,” for my first-year writing students as a reminder of what was demonstrated in class.
Good stuff. I hope to write a more extensive review once I have more experience under my belt. Stay tuned.
So what tools do you use for such online tutorials?
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