Unfortunately I’ve had a student ruin this for me … he refuses to read in my class, and since he is 504 and special ed, I have to accommodate him by reading the power points for him. So I am a bit tired of doing screen casts.
However, Camtasia 7 absolutely rocks. Everything works slightly better, and there are some lovely new features.
Screencasts are infinitely easier to do. It makes doing them in segments very easy and fast. I frequently switch from screen casting a Powerpoint to screen casting code. When I do, and I ask the record to save and exit, it puts the new screen cast video into the open existing project (or if it is the first one, creates a new project. Not only is the new video in the clip bin, but it is also added to the timeline. Most of the time that is good, but a few times I’ve had my "cursor" in the middle, and the screen cast was placed there, instead of the end where I wanted it.
I do lots of things with Camtasia as a teacher. Yesterday I had a student who had problems with an assignment and I just didn’t have the time, energy or brain power to solve it. Had her email it to me, looked at it this morning, and made a screen cast for her showing how to fix it. http://www.screencast.com/t/Mjg0OTczN
I have used it to record and display student work.
I use it to accommodate special ed students (especially hard of hearing students).
And of course, use it to record what I do in the classroom. There are lots of those in my ScreenCast account.
It’s also fun to use to make movies with a video camera. I have made a ton of dog training videoes. http://www.screencast.com/t/MTJkNzJm
I am looking forward to playing with the new features of Camtasia.