Deciding on Software

To begin catching up on what I've been doing...

Following my meeting with Matt, and at the recommendation of Roxanne, I took a look at the Digital Research Tools (DiRT) Wiki, which has a page on screencasting software: http://digitalresearchtools.pbworks.com/Screencasts. Besides the two commercial products that I can use through the iSchool's IT lab and the libraries' Technology Integration department (Camtasia and Captivate), this wiki suggested the following free and open source software: CamStudio, Jing, uTIPu, and Wink. From the brief descriptions of these programs on DiRT and the product descriptions on their developers' websites, I determined that none of them offered enough editting functionality for my purposes. Most basically, they do not allow separate audio and video editting. So my choice was down to Camtasia or Captivate. In the end, after meeting jointly with Matt and Roxanne, I decided to use both - Camtasia for the screen-captures and demonstrations (making use of its smoother video recording and zoom-and-pan capabilites) and Captivate for the quizzes and interactive portions.