Here Horst Jens, another long-time author in ShowMeDo, tells us about his background working with kids and open-source and how he spreads knowledge via screencasts.  He takes charge of the interview later on and sets his own questions that he has to answer.  Horst mainly uses Linux with RecordMyDesktop.  Note – I’m a co-founder of ShowMeDo.

What’s your background?

I work and live in Vienna, Austria as an programmer/computer teacher and have founded my own company spielend-programmieren.at (”programming while playing”) with the focus on teaching young students the joy of open-source game-programming.

What sort of screencasts do you make?

Usually screencasts about themes of the Linux/Open-Source world. I like to work with  students and kids. See my ShowMeDo page.

Why do you think screencasts work?

I think there is no better way of learning than having to explain a topic to someone else. Producing screencasts force the students to learn a topic to be able to explain it.  I see it as a learning tool for the screencast-maker first, for the screencast-watcher second.

showmedo.com (where I publish almost exclusively) has a good feedback function and I get emails nearly each day, encouraging me to make more and better screencasts.

So, the motivation aspect  works for me

I suspect that most of the watchers of “my” screencasts don’t learn so much from the video itself; more get the feeling like: “hey, it’s that simple, even those kid on the video could do it” and the watcher does the little required actual learning by looking up the documentation.

However I noticed that many people learn not by watching what the teacher says but instead by watching what their neighbor does.

Maybe screencasts support this way of learning.

Do kids like making and watching screencasts?

Until the kids find out how much hard work it is to produce even a very small video: yes.

Having to be silent while one kid tries to speak a single sentence over-and-over again is sometimes hard for the other kids.

The good thing is that kids become experienced fast and it pays to make several screencast with the same group of kids at different times.

Do screencasts ever replace text+pictures for explaining certain topics?

I hope not, (functional) illiteracy is a big enough problem that I see while teaching in a rich, developed country like Austria.

The biggest problem for me with screencasts is that you are stuck with the creators speed. In a book, I can turn some pages forward if I’m bored or read a chapter slower if it’s difficult. While technically I can fast-forward and rewind on a video, it is less practicable (streaming) and more difficult to find the next “chapter”.

Ian Ozsvald encourages authors to do series of smaller videos instead of one big video, that is a good idea.

To answer the question: hopefully not replace but complete.

What software do you use to screencast?

Getting a kick out of being 100% open source I work with xvidcap on linux. My newest version of Ubuntu Linux don’t like xvidcap so I work with RecordMyDesktop at the moment.

I never found a good video-editor on Linux (there exist several but are all too complicated for me) so I work in a very arcane way with mplayer command-lines to include subtitles and logos, cut pauses etc. See Ubuntu video editing for notes. For editing sound I use Audacity.

What hardware do you use?

Different laptops, and a Logitech webcam. I found out that the microphone built-in to the webcam is better than the cheap external microphones I have used in the past.

How long does it take to get a new person making a screencast?

As a rule of thumb you need 10 times the “film” time to record a screencast. So to produce a 6-minute clip you need a full hour (with no post-production). If you have experience this time decreases dramatically.

Does watching a screencast about a commercial tool help you decide whether that tool is the one you need?

“About a commercial tool” ? Could not say, I prefer open-source tools

I experimented with the idea of making a screencast about a “close-sourced”-computer game (YouTube) but I doubt that anyone will buy the game because of my video I see screencasts more in a support role, for users that already bought a software rather than an marketing tool.

From a customer perspective, I would prefer a product that inspire users to produce lots of  screencasts over a product that provide only company-made screencasts. So I could use number and quality of user-made screencasts as an popularity-indicator of a product as well as an indicator of the quality of support I could expect from the product’s community.

What useful sites have you found that teach screencasting?

showmedo.com has all that you need.

And at this point Horst decided to write his own questions and answers to express further thoughts, mostly about ShowMeDo (note – I’m a co-founder) that he felt needed airing

What don’t you like about ShowMeDo?

….(long pause)…this is a very difficult question! Well, the ShowMeDo wiki is not very popular, that’s sad because I like Wiki. Also I don’t see the sense of anonymous comments. I want to answer everyone who writes me a comment. If you really need anonymous feedback, a simple rating or flag system is enough.

What do you like about showmedo.com?

• The founders, Ian and Kyran, these are great guys
• The focus, about open-source
• The policy: the videos are free, and authors are encourage to license under a creative-commons license. Lot of video sites look for the quick dollar; be it with banner-ads, be it with pay-per-view models etc. Most videos on showmedo are free from the start, and I think the subscription model is very fair.

What was your worst moment with showmedo?

Working 2 weekends and visiting my own elemtary school twice to produce a single video with elementary school kids…just to realize the video is crappy because of my visual concept. I haven’t published the video yet.  Poor kids, they put much work into it

On a German OpenOffice forum I got criticised for a series of German open-office video tutorials. I do not mind the critique (some of the videos were bad) nor the style (produce nothing, criticise  others) but i don’t like to get criticised  for the idea of showing the speaker’s face using a webcam. I had seen this concept on ShowMeDo first (on a video about Django) and have never created a screencast without a webcam since.

What was your best moment with showmedo?

• Getting good feedback right from the start for my first (crappy) video
• Getting good feedback still feels good every time
• Doing something for free education
• Winning a price at the ars-electronica competition because I made a ShowMeDo screencast with kids – this felt very good
• Seeing my name published in the Python Papers because of Ian’s work
• Too many ‘best moments’ to select one and they still are coming
• Producing a video with students in Chinese and Russian language  even though I speak no word of each language
• Reading comments below a video about Python in Russian language:

“Thank God I understand Python.” – gasto

“Clear and simple even if I don’t understand either Russian nor German.” – richard1956

“Very nice introduction to Python! I enjoyed the video very much! I was surprised to find how anyone can easily follow along no matter what language you speak! I feel stupid now, I guess that’s why Python is called a programming language : )” – anonymous

Where do you want to see ShowMeDo.com in the future?

In a world where bad news and pessimistic prognoses are produced by the hour I make an optimistic forecast: ShowMeDo will be there in the future, it will be somewhat bigger and
still great.

Along with the One-Laptop-per-Child project, I think that the best way to improve this planet and it’s residents is to spread access to knowledge and education. ShowMeDo can be a part of it; providing the tools, the knowledge and the community for everyone to share his bit of wisdom and giving access to this wisdom to everyone.

I also think that video-platforms like ShowMeDo will inherit the role that currently big publisher houses hold for the book market: Providing for the audience the service of filtering only the most interesting of all the those possible authors and providing for the authors the service of helping to reach the audience.

I feel  that those companies that provide the best all around (learning) service  will rise while those that hold on to the concept of physical learning products will fail.

In ShowMeDo’s financial humble beginnings, Ian and Kyran have already proved  to always put the user’s needs before their own needs. This attitude makes me certain to see a bright future for ShowMeDo in the long run.

Become a better screencaster – read The Screencasting Handbook.  We’re distilling 4 years of experience into our book, the book will tell you everything you need to know to screencast faster, better and more efficiently.

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Ian produces professional screencasts (ProCasts, twitter), writes The Screencasting Handbook and blogs (IanOzsvald.com).

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