The screencast is made with Camtasia on the PC. I find it easier and better-sounding to record the audio using iMovie. So, I record on the PC and save as an avi file, then bring that to the Mac to record the audio in iMovie, then send it back to the PC as a wav file that can then be imported back into Camtasia for the final print of the tutorial. Composing using Camtasia, for me, involves a process in which one sketches out a model project while thinking along the way about how to capture the screens necessary to demonstrate the most important steps. I find it to be an odd herky jerky version of writing and teaching blended together. One tries to imagine voice-overs and advice to writers, while winding one's way through the composition of the sample project.

What I haven't been able to do in making screencasts is develop a clear sense of how to integrate voice or style into the compositions. Although the idea in the more teacherly screencasts is to layer rhetorical instruction over the technical steps depicted on screen, the ethos is one of informative technology tutor and not much else. Perhaps that sense of speaker is appropriate, but it makes me wonder about recent conversations and postings by Bradley Dilger and on if:book about voice and authorship. I wonder how much these concerns of voice are amplified as one actually records voice, and then (ugh!) plays it back. At some point, I'd like to experiment with a narrative screencast or perhaps with some other form.