This weekend I offered a session on teaching with an iPad and found myself discussing an online tool that has nothing to do with iPads. myBrainShark allows you to upload PowerPoint slides and then add audio one slide at a time. There are advantages to both faculty and students to myBrainShark over using Camtasia to create a video of PowerPoint slides.
From the instructor’s point of view, Camtasia can be frustrating to those of us who are perfectionists. If you make a mistake when recording with Camtasia, you either live with the error or start the entire video over again. When using myBrainShark, you record the audio separately for each slide. If you make a mistake on one slide, you only have to rerecord that individual slide.
From the student’s point of view, myBrainShark is nice because it allows students to jump forward or backward one slide at a time. Thus if a student wants to listen to an explanation again, the student does not need to struggle to figure out how far back to rewind the video, the student can simply click to jump to the previous slide.
myBrainShark is free for both instructors and students. You can sign up and/or watch an introductory video about myBrainShark at http://www.brainshark.com/mybrainshark.