Snagit

I want to blog about Snagit because it's a tool I find myself using at work nearly every day. I think it's a pretty familar tool now, so perhaps it's not exactly "cutting edge" but I heart Snagit. So this is my shout out.

Snagit is a screen-capturing software that allows you to basically take a picture of whatever is on your computer screen and embed it in a document or website, email it, or use it to create a custom graphic. You can try a free trial at the link below. Licenses cost about $50.

http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp

I create a lot of training materials, and my training involves technology that, frankly, is very difficult to explain. Therefore, I do a lot of in-person training so I can SHOW my colleagues how to do something rather than trying to explain in words. This would be just as useful for teachers who want to show (rather than describe) something more complex, or who want to incorporate a lot of images into their units.

Why do I love it?

It's easy to use, flexible, and makes my life much easier. I think I learned how to use the basics of Snagit in about 1 minute. I found it very intuitive.

I don't get fancy with it; I use it to capture an image of whatever it is I'm training on so I can embed it as part of my training materials or even email it to users (like a "this is how your screen should look" type of thing). Snagit creates a frame that you can place over whatever you want to capture. It's great that you can control this, because you can limit the size of what you want to caputre so you're not wasting space. Once Snagit captures the part of the screen you've selected, you can edit the image. I use the highlighting feature quite a bit, but you can also insert text, shapes (like arrows, for instance), and a few other things. This is perfect because rather than explaining something in detail, I can email someone a screenshot with key items highlighted and a few words of text like "enter student ID here". Doing this gets my point across in a very effective but simple manner.

What are the challenges?

Make sure you've brushed up on those fair-use and copyright recommendations. Snagit makes it exceedingly easy to take images from the Internet, and it's therefore also easy to step over copyright boundaries. The positive is that there are plenty of copyright-free images out there to use...so just be careful with what you are copying and how you are using it.

So thank you, Snagit. I no longer have to be on the phone saying "you know that icon thing by that other thing that's called, um, I'm not sure what it's called but it's that bigger thing near that smaller thing?" Now I can just say "let me email you a screen shot." You make my day happier.