As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m working with teachers on flipping their classrooms. We’ve looked at a number of tools for recording. Here were the most popular tools we found:
| Screencast-o-Matic Free | Screencast-o-Matic Pro | Jing – Free | Jing – Pro | Camtasia Studio | |
| Cost | Free | $12 per year | Free | $14.95 per year | $179 – single user license
|
| Features Limits | MP4, AVI or FLV
15 minute limit Branded w/SOM logo Shares directly to YouTube Can upload to SOM website for sharing Users need to be connected to Internet to use
|
MP4, AVI or FLV
60 minute limit Branded w/SOM logo Shares directly to YouTube Can upload to SOM website for sharing Has editing interface available Works offline or online Can integrate feed from webcam Lets you work with a script as you screencast |
SWF Video (flash – not iOS friendly)
Limited to 5 minutes. Has branding Requires software download/install. |
SWF or MPEG-4
Limited to 5 minutes. No branding Shares directly to YouTube Records from Webcam Requires software download/install. |
Tons of features. See detailed list.
Requires software download/install. |
| Best bet for one-off student use | 1 | 2 | |||
| Best value for teacher use | 1 | 2 | Great program, but expensive. Great for online courses, but more features than most teachers need. Why pay for features you’ll never use? |
My teachers went with Screencast-o-Matic. Basically, easiest to use and most bang for the buck. It has all the features we thought we needed and we could license all the teachers who were interested for less than a single seat of the next best contender. I’ll keep you posted on how the flipping works in the fall. I’m hoping it’s just a first step to more creative, innovative teaching opportunities 
