Producing online lectures with iOS, Mac or PC - What do I need to start within half an hour?

Why I produce online lectures?

Creating online lectures is rated to be very effective by my students. They say they are able to learn content at their own speed. Replaying parts of the lecture the are struggling with and of course access all the content when they are preparing for written exams. What is in for me as a teacher?

I am able to shift lectures into homework time. So students come to my lessons with the knowledge I taught them at home, get tested at the start of the lesson and so I am creating time for exercises, working on problems and of course in science - lab time.

So it's worth producing online lectures - question is of course: How to do it in a time efficient way? What hardware and software to use for it?

This post will give you the possibilities for 4 different platforms you can use to create your online lectures.

The most time-efficient ways I found for it.

Using an iPad and the knowmia teach app:

A great way to create online lectures for me is to reuse powerpoint presentations I have already created for use during my usual lessons.

I tend to convert them into PDF format and then add spoken explanations and sometimes with a little video of myself.

Take a look at this sample - it is in German though.

How to produce an online lecture with knowmia in under 10 minutes?

Here is how to start out with knowmia - just click for free setup and use of a knowmia account

You want additional support? Welcome to the knowmia support blog

This pen will give you additional sensitivity and resolution on your iPad - almost turning it into a drawing tablet.

Using a Windows PC (Powerpoint and the free software Camstudio is needed)

A very powerful combination indeed. Also falling back on powerpoint presentations that I have already created, this is a very efficient way of producing online lessons. It is also possible to bring in a little video window of yourself talking and making all those wild hand gestures we teachers love to do. This is possible just by choosing: tools - video annotation when you are recording a lesson using camstudio.
In my case the webcam of my windows laptop does not work - so I was not able to add it here.

How to create a online lecture using camstudio - take a look:

Using a Mac OS machine (Powerpoint/ Keynote and Ink2Go)

Albeit costing 17,99 € Ink2Go will add some real value to your work.
Ink2Go is actually a kind of whiteboard software that gives you the functions of creating screencasts, adding a video of yourself talking as little window, making annotations, ... .
I never regretted the money I spent for this little piece of software.