Bootstrapping Our Way Across the Curriculum
Wink by Debugmode.com - Cool presentation software!
I've discovered a new friend. Its name is Wink, made by Debugmode.com. Wink is presentation software in the form of screen-capture and video capture software.
I teach software applications such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Up until now, I've relied on screen captures and detailed typed-up descriptions, outside of classroom demonstration. Now, with Wink, I can make a Flash file and upload it to Blackboard (our community college's learning management system) and students can watch the file anytime they want. Over and over.
The way Wink works is it knits together screenshots. For example, you can take one screenshot in Word of the mouse cursor hovering over the File menu. Then you can take another one of the menu having popped open, showing all of the menu's choices. Finally, you can take a screenshot of the mouse hovering over the "Save" option in the menu. Wink records where the mouse cursor is in each screenshot and, depending on the settings, figures out the mouse movements between each still screenshot you took! The end result? A much smaller animation than simply recording every movement on the screen (including hesitations and mistakes).
Wink can also be configured to record short sections of full video, if needed. For example, if I need to demonstrate how to draw a shape in a program, I can set Wink to record every move of my mouse for a few seconds.
Once the animation is created, it can be viewed using the Flash viewer, which is installed on an overwhelming number of computers (Macs and PCs).
if someone needs to print out the presentation, it's possible! Wink can be set to generate PDFs and postscript files for that.
See a short demo movie below that I created using Wink in about 15 minutes. I'm not perfect at it, since I only just got it, but I'll be getting to know it much better very soon! Note that you may need to right-click on the Flash movie and select Zoom In for it to look right if you're using a low screen resolution (1024 x 768, for example).
Wink is open source software. You can download it for free from www.debugmode.com. Consider donating if you find it useful!
I teach software applications such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Up until now, I've relied on screen captures and detailed typed-up descriptions, outside of classroom demonstration. Now, with Wink, I can make a Flash file and upload it to Blackboard (our community college's learning management system) and students can watch the file anytime they want. Over and over.
The way Wink works is it knits together screenshots. For example, you can take one screenshot in Word of the mouse cursor hovering over the File menu. Then you can take another one of the menu having popped open, showing all of the menu's choices. Finally, you can take a screenshot of the mouse hovering over the "Save" option in the menu. Wink records where the mouse cursor is in each screenshot and, depending on the settings, figures out the mouse movements between each still screenshot you took! The end result? A much smaller animation than simply recording every movement on the screen (including hesitations and mistakes).
Wink can also be configured to record short sections of full video, if needed. For example, if I need to demonstrate how to draw a shape in a program, I can set Wink to record every move of my mouse for a few seconds.
Once the animation is created, it can be viewed using the Flash viewer, which is installed on an overwhelming number of computers (Macs and PCs).
if someone needs to print out the presentation, it's possible! Wink can be set to generate PDFs and postscript files for that.
See a short demo movie below that I created using Wink in about 15 minutes. I'm not perfect at it, since I only just got it, but I'll be getting to know it much better very soon! Note that you may need to right-click on the Flash movie and select Zoom In for it to look right if you're using a low screen resolution (1024 x 768, for example).
Wink is open source software. You can download it for free from www.debugmode.com. Consider donating if you find it useful!
- Attachments:
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winkdemo.swf, 535 KB
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