Time is a precious asset. One of the greatest demands on a learning and development professional’s time is the need to design and develop educational materials and to provide support to learners. Time and resource constraints often mean professionals are caught in a delicate balance of producing high quality learning support in a tight window of time.
Learning new technologies to support educational development is exciting, but often time consuming. Too often, time to foster one’s own professional development is limited, which means educators are looking for tools that are easy-to-learn, can save them time, and result in a high quality product. In the realm of rapid screen capture technology, SnagIt is a lifesaver.
At its heart, SnagIt is a screen capture tool for video and images, offered by TechSmith. While it is not the best tool on the market for long-form, complex video-based learning programs or for intensive image editing, it is by far the best tool for rapid development. What sets SnagIt apart is its ease-of-use and quality of the end product. The capture tool in SnagIt provides precision tools to capture exactly what you want on the screen, including a scrolling capture feature.
Once a capture is made, there are many editing options, including adding highlights, bubbles, arrows, blurring out content, and even adding steps to your instructions. For videos, you can trim content from any part of the capture. Once your capture is finished, you can save, share, or send it in a variety of file formats and to outputs such as Microsoft Office, Google Drive, and even social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. There are many ways to utilize SnagIt for educational needs, two of which are highlighted below.
Training Documentation Support
SnagIt is simply the best tool on the market for assisting in the development of training documentation. When you need an image for documentation, SnagIt allows you to quickly take a precise capture on the screen. The image you need isn’t all visible on the screen? No problem! SnagIt has a scrolling feature that will allow you to capture everything. Sensitive information on the screen? Want to draw attention to a specific area? Easily fixed! SnagIt has a blurring tool for just that purpose. In addition, you can add boxes, highlights, text, and other visuals to draw attention to or explain key points of an image capture. The step tool can also make explaining the order of items even more straightforward. You can then export it all as one file and import it directly into Word or other programs you are using to create documentation. There is no need to be a Photoshop professional or deal with messy grouping of adding aspects around images in programs like Word. SnagIt makes it quick, simple, and easy to support your training documentation efforts.
Just-in-Time Video Training
Does a learner have a unique question that is easier to show than try to explain via email or the phone? Do you have short, simple content that requires delivery via video? SnagIt is the solution for you. SnagIt provides the opportunity for one-click video recording. You can capture the screen as well as add narrations. Once you’re finished capturing the video, SnagIt allows you to edit any part of the video from beginning to end to clean up mistakes or unwanted content. The step tool and other editing features discussed previously can also be used to enhance your video capture. You can then quickly save the video and share it to learners through a variety of means. You don’t have to be a professional video editor to create a simple video lesson with SnagIt!
In addition to training documentation support and just-in-time video training, SnagIt is helpful in numerous ways in daily work. It can be used to quickly share information with other colleagues that are visual in nature. SnagIt is a great resource for providing feedback to learners on presentations, papers, or other learning projects. It can also be used for taking notes related to visual information or capturing and saving key images or video from the web. The uses for SnagIt are confined only by your imagination!
Even though it has been on the market for years, many learning and development professionals have still either never heard of SnagIt or have yet to give it a try. SnagIt provides learning and development professionals a simple path to producing high quality screen capture projects quickly. It is an ideal tool for training documentation, just-in-time videos, and visual collaboration. SnagIt is available for both the Windows and Mac OS. A single user license is only $49.95 with no subscriptions, so it is also a highly affordable tool that won’t break the budget. If you’re looking for an easy-to-use tool for screen captures that produces great results, look no further than SnagIt.
