It was very interesting to to go through the process of creating my asynchronous material. I tend to be a very practical person. I like to have a plan and know exactly what direction I am going. Therefore when it came to creating this content and looking at topic I wanted to create something that would be a time saver and practical in nature. During my time observing classes I noticed that during the session one classes time was spent covering useful items on the website. I felt that this information was useful and definitely needed to be conveyed, but that given the general nature of it that it could be more useful asynchronously. This would give the librarian more instruction time during the lesson to cover other material, and allow the student to view the material at their own convenience.
When creating the screencast I ran into several issues. I felt that it was useful to create separate audio files from the video file. However, I was unable to figure out how to listen to the audio file while I recorded the video, and therefore struggled to make my timing match up. Also, audio was an issue in other ways. The microphone I used created a lot of background noise and through my editing of the audio, I feel I distorted the audio track even more. I reach the point in editing, that I felt I was hurting the file more than I was helping. Some of these issues I feel spring from my ignorance of the software Camtasia. Perhaps through more practice and perhaps some instruction on the software, my video and audio content will improve. In addition, I was also at a loss when beginning and ending my video. I am unsure what the best practices are for creating screencasts and would be interested in knowing what is recommended by others.
All in all I feel this was a very helpful learning experience, and certainly furthered my knowledge of asynchronous material.