Screen Toaster

For the multimedia project assignment, I worked with Kyle, Katrina, and Radhika to explore the web2.0 tool known as Screen Toaster. While I can see where it's applications would come in handy, it was, in my opinion, not very user friendly. The recording itself was not tricky to figure out, however the final steps to download and embed from the program were a real pain. The biggest difficulty we had with the program was that it did not notify us that we would have only one opportunity to download our recording. If we missed that opportunity, which took place during our save options, then we were no longer able to access our recording and make changes that would allow us to download or embed. We even tried to take the embedding code and input it into our blogs (as we have many other times), but discovered that this code only acted as a link to our recording rather than an embedded video. Having discovered this, we were forced to attempt more recordings (as well as give up more precious time) to complete the required task in order to download the video and upload it to our individual blogs and teachertube.com. Another percieved flaw I discovered in the program had to do with the voice-over application. We found that the recording would cut us off at both the beginning and the end even though we gave it adequate time to capture the entire recording.

Having manipulated this tool and discovered it's strengths and weaknesses, I feel more comfortable putting it into use, however I am not a huge fan and feel that there must be better programs out there that serve to meet the same function.