There are two technologies that are familiar to many software professionals, but somehow don’t see much use in the rest of the organization. The first technology is computer screen movie capture (aka screencasting) and the second is the ability of virtually every laptop and most video cards to support multiple monitors.
Screencasts (aka screen capture movies)
Screen capture movie software (the “screencast” recorder) has been around for at least a decade. In essence, screencast recorders are virtual computer-screen camcorders. You install them and let them run in the background. When you want to record your onscreen activity, you press ‘record’ (usually a hotkey) and continue working. When you’re finished, you press ‘stop’ (another hotkey) and a full-motion movie of your activity is stored to disk. If you wish, you can record sound as well, most likely in the form of a running commentary spoken into the PC’s microphone. While there are many screencast programs on the market, iPOV has had good experience with the stability and value offered by BBFlashback and the features and performance of Camtasia.
Public screencast examples are everywhere. YouTube is full of them. So, wouldn’t you expect to see widespread use in large companies and organizations for internal IT training? That just seems to be starting. I suspect that there are at least 4 contributing reasons why it doesn’t seem to be as common as we would expect:
Lack of Awareness – Screencast software is a surprising well-kept secret. We can’t count the number of times that we have spoken to programmers, program managers, and CIOs that don’t know even they exist. If we point them to examples on YouTube, they say: “I wondered how that was done”.
Camera Shyness – It takes a certain amount of guts to record a movie that has your voice on it. What if you misspeak? What if you have a squeaky voice? What if you have a thick accent? All sorts of things can go wrong that will make you more nervous. Then you will make more mistakes and get even more nervous. Then you will give up.
Lack of searchability – It takes time to demonstrate a complex software operation. Ten, twenty or thirty minutes is not uncommon. How many potential users have the patience to watch that much video to get an answer to a question? The problem is not getting to the right spot (most screencasts have tracker bars), the problem is knowing there is a right spot to get to. If only you could search the screencasts the way you search Google.
No place to store them – Screencast movie files have gotten a lot smaller – but many are still too big to attach to corporate emails. That means that you need to put them on a web server or CD. If you accumulate a large collection, you will be talking gigabytes. Then how do you move them or find them. That brings us back to the searchability concern.
Until someone finds a way to overcome these issues, they will unfairly delay the adoption of this powerful and exciting technology.
With dual monitor support, you can hook up a second monitor and expand your laptop or desktop to double its size. This will give you enough screen real estate to support two applications that are fully open and functional. The application to the problem statement at the start of this diary should be obvious. With two monitors, you can open your application on one screen and the help window on the other. You can copy and paste from one to the other in one quick motion. You can read instructions in the help file as you follow them in the application.
Every notebook computer built in the past 5 years has built-in support for an external monitor. For desktop computers, you may have to add an inexpensive video card and a second monitor. The total one-time cost is typically less than $150 per seat. The return on that investment for a learner will be huge. Nonetheless, this capability is just starting to get the attention it deserves. You will find dual monitor setups in many software development shops and especially on trading floors, but not in most ordinary offices. Since there is no obvious drawback, it seems to be mainly an issue of awareness – and occasionally bureaucracy. One large company told me that all their IT support was outsourced to a 3rd party computer services firm. The service firm charged $100 per month for each monitor that it deployed!
Nevermind.
If, however, the PTB (powers that be) allow you to experiment with ways to achieve much higher productivity at a minimal cost, here are some additional tools and articles with more ideas for multiple monitors:
Two Underutilized Software Training Technologies
There are two technologies that are familiar to many software professionals, but somehow don’t see much use in the rest of the organization. The first technology is computer screen movie capture (aka screencasting) and the second is the ability of virtually every laptop and most video cards to support multiple monitors.
Screencasts (aka screen capture movies)
Screen capture movie software (the “screencast” recorder) has been around for at least a decade. In essence, screencast recorders are virtual computer-screen camcorders. You install them and let them run in the background. When you want to record your onscreen activity, you press ‘record’ (usually a hotkey) and continue working. When you’re finished, you press ‘stop’ (another hotkey) and a full-motion movie of your activity is stored to disk. If you wish, you can record sound as well, most likely in the form of a running commentary spoken into the PC’s microphone. While there are many screencast programs on the market, iPOV has had good experience with the stability and value offered by BBFlashback and the features and performance of Camtasia.
Public screencast examples are everywhere. YouTube is full of them. So, wouldn’t you expect to see widespread use in large companies and organizations for internal IT training? That just seems to be starting. I suspect that there are at least 4 contributing reasons why it doesn’t seem to be as common as we would expect:
Until someone finds a way to overcome these issues, they will unfairly delay the adoption of this powerful and exciting technology.
Some Links with ideas:
Dual Monitor
With dual monitor support, you can hook up a second monitor and expand your laptop or desktop to double its size. This will give you enough screen real estate to support two applications that are fully open and functional. The application to the problem statement at the start of this diary should be obvious. With two monitors, you can open your application on one screen and the help window on the other. You can copy and paste from one to the other in one quick motion. You can read instructions in the help file as you follow them in the application.
Every notebook computer built in the past 5 years has built-in support for an external monitor. For desktop computers, you may have to add an inexpensive video card and a second monitor. The total one-time cost is typically less than $150 per seat. The return on that investment for a learner will be huge. Nonetheless, this capability is just starting to get the attention it deserves. You will find dual monitor setups in many software development shops and especially on trading floors, but not in most ordinary offices. Since there is no obvious drawback, it seems to be mainly an issue of awareness – and occasionally bureaucracy. One large company told me that all their IT support was outsourced to a 3rd party computer services firm. The service firm charged $100 per month for each monitor that it deployed!
Nevermind.
If, however, the PTB (powers that be) allow you to experiment with ways to achieve much higher productivity at a minimal cost, here are some additional tools and articles with more ideas for multiple monitors:
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