The ability to capture a picture of your computer (or smartphone) screen, annotate it and share it has become a valuable tool for educators who are now teaching fully or partially online. Well done screen captures with annotation can help students learn how to use new educational websites, not to mention help troubleshoot a technical problem by sending the school computer helpdesk a screen capture of an error message.
If you’d like to learn how to make your own annotated screen captures on either Windows and Mac Computers, follow along below with the UVic Digital Scholarship Commons tutorial that I created for the Interactive & Multimedia Learning class I’m currently teaching:
- Download & install Techsmith Capture (Mac & Windows)
- Introductory slides
- Screen capture & annotate activity
As mentioned one obvious way to use screen capture and annotation is for software tutorials. How else could image capture & annotation be used in Educational contexts and beyond?
- Photo-based how-to guides with annotations (see the reclaimed 2×4 picture to the right.
- Mobile app tutorials
Other general uses of image capture and annotation:
- Error reporting to an IT helpdesk
- Save important things you want to refer to in the future like trip itineraries.
When done correctly, some of the evidenced-based Principles of Multimedia Learning that support the use of screen capture & annotation in instructional settings are:
- Multimedia Principle: People learn better from words & pictures than words alone
- Redundancy principle: People learn better when the same info is not presented in more than 1 format
- Signalling principle: People learn better when cues are added that highlight the key information
- Spatial Contiguity Principle: People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented close to each other in time & space
- Segmenting principle: People learn better when a multimedia message is presented in learner-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit
Happy screen capturing!