Captivate vs. Camtasia

I've used both Captivate and Camtasia for creating online library tutorials. I like them both I generally favor Captivate because it has a few more features. Michael Steeleworthy of the blog the zeds : library science did a recent post comparing the two tutorial creation softwares. His job is to make recommendation to other librarians concerning which software to use and, in this post, he makes a case for why he generally prefers Captivate.

Great Video Tutorial Resource

Khan Academy features a many short online video tutorials concerning a number of different topics, especially in the areas of math and science. This may be a good resource to point students to who need some extra help. Here's an example of an Algebra linear equations tutorial:

Captivate Available for Mac Users

Captivate is an Adobe product used to create tutorials - I use it to design instructional library and information literacy tutorials for classes. According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Adobe is releasing Captivate 5 which is now available for the Mac platform and offers new features like better video synchronization within projects. If you do go for the Mac version, just keep in mind that the PowerPoint plug-in piece (allowing you to import PowerPoint presentations into your projects) is still only available to Windows users.

Best Practices in Screencasting

ANtimated Tutorial Sharing (A.N.T.S) Project is a site that allows libraries to share open source library tutorials. And while that won't be of interest to everyone, the site has published a list of links concerning best practices in creating instruction screencasts and online tutorials. The links provided can be helpful to any instructor seeking information on how to design effective tutorials effectively and measure the effectiveness of tutorials.