Last week Google introduced a new way to record screencasts on your Chromebook. You can see my tutorial on how to use it here or as embedded at the end of this blog post. One week after using it, here are five things I like about it and I think it will be helpful for teachers and students to move forward. Automatic copy
All screencasts you create with Chrome OS Screen Recorder are automatically copied to you. These transcripts are timestamped to make them easier to read and click through to the relevant section of your video. You can edit the copy to correct any errors. An example of an error that I always need to correct is displayed whenever I say my last name in a video. Byrne always appears as a burn in an automatically generated transcript.
Automatic copy translation
When students see your video and its related transcripts, they can choose to read the transcript in English or any other language of their choice. Go to 1:36 in this video to see how students can see translated transcripts of your screencast videos.
Auto-save in Google Drive
As you might expect from a tool created by Google, all screencasts you create with Chromebook Screencast Recorder are automatically saved to your Google Drive account. Like everything else on your Google Drive, you can quickly and easily share your videos with your students in Google Classroom.
Turn on quickly
Chrome OS Screencast Recorder launches faster than the browser-based screencasting tools I’ve tried. This is probably because Screencast Recorder is part of the OS and not an external third party service running in Chrome. You will notice in my demo video that I did not select what I want to capture on my screen. This is different from all the screencasting tools I’ve used on Chromebooks. Before you start recording you need to specify for all these other tools if you want to record a tab, a window or a full screen.
Drawing tools
You’ll notice that Chrome OS Screencast Recorder doesn’t have as many drawing options as some other screencasting tools. At first, I was a little disappointed by this. But on further consideration, I realized that I don’t actually use all the drawing tools in those other screencasting tools. And the limitations of the drawing options probably helped keep Chrome OS Screencast Recorder fast and smooth if Google tried to cram a bunch of features into the initial launch of the recorder.
Watch my video below to see how the new screencasting tool built into the Chromebook works.