Thanks to Pete and Gail for inviting me to add my words of wisdom to this blog (whatever those words may be I’m not sure yet!)
At SOLINET, we are busily creating asynchronous classes using Adobe Captivate. We used to use a product called Toolbook and unfortunately when the one person at SOLINET who knew how to use it and update it, left the company, we decided it wasn’t worth our time to re-learn it. So for a couple of years we haven’t really had any asynch training. It has been an interesting road to deciding on a product. It took a long time to finally decide on Captivate – and most of it was a money issue. I personally wanted something a lot more robust and complex but those cost a lot. So we did a lot of testing internally and finally decided on Captivate. There is a new version coming out (#3 to be exact) in August and I have high hopes for some of the quiz functionality. I’m curious to see if anyone has any specific tips to share about creating content with Captivate.
I’ve been meaning to get off my bum and buy either Captivate or Camtasia. Any thoughts as to the benefits of one over the other?
I’m currently using Macromedia Captivate, which lacks much of the functionality of Adobe Captivate 2. I am interested to see if anyone else here has any insight into Captivate 2 and if they are considering upgrading to 3 next month.
I haven’t used Camtasia extensively, but from my limited experience, it appears that it’s basic function is for demonstration. Captivate includes some interactive functions like adding quizzes and linking to other objects for branching classes/demonstrations. You also have to consider how much detail you want the viewer to see. Captivate offers flexible editing, while Camtasia records EVERYTHING. It’s a blessing and a curse. To be fair, Captivate can miss an action or two during capture, which will never happen with Camtasia.
Of course, cost is a consideration. The upgrade to Captivate 3 is about $700 for a single license, whereas Camtasia 4 is about $300.
Well we were looking for a program which would support Macintosh as well as PC. To be honest Captivate is sort of misleading because they say they support Mac but there is a bug apparently which wasn’t listed on any of the Adobe.com pages I could find. So that was one of the big reasons. I played around with both but liked how Captivate worked more than Camtasia (for the instructor as well as student) but both have trial versions available so it’s worth it to test for 30 days.
We used Camtasia at the Seattle Public Library to create a variety of online tutorials, audio-visual presentations, and other training materials. The learning curve was a little steep but it is a very powerful product. There is a comparison of Captivate and Camtasia available at http://www.webbriefcase.com.au/2006-11/screencasting-tools-camtasia-studio-vs-adobe-captivate/ .
We recently used Captivate for our online LE@D Excel for Librarians course and found that it works wonderfully! User response has been very good.
http://www.leadonline.info/viewCourse.cfm?Code=LDRMSX
It’s so important to draw attention to reading, and attract reluctant readers to it,especially boys. In fact, I’ve recently completed a feature magazine article on this subject that came out in October, “Help for Struggling, Reluctant Readers.”
I grew up as a reluctant reader, in spite of the fact that my father published over 70 books. Now I write action-adventures & mysteries, especially for tween boys, that avid boy readers and girls enjoy just as much.
My blog, Books for Boys http://booksandboys.blogspot.com is dedicated to drawing attention to the importance of reading. And I have a new book, Lost Island Smugglers, coming out in June.
Keep up your good work.
Max Elliot Anderson