At lunch I was looking through my newsreader and saw a post by Chris Craft about a web based screencasting tool called screencast-o-matic. I took a look and boy is this thing impressive. With just a few mouse clicks you can create a good quality screencast with audio. You can designate if your screencast is public or private, add notes at specific sections, embed your screencast in a web page or blog, or export it as a static file. This is about as easy as it gets. Below is a quick example. A tool like this allows you to very quickly create screencasts and changes my thinking about how to use them. For example, if I get an email from a teacher regarding a technology question, or with an inquiry about how to do something, I can now very quickly access this tool, create a quick little tutorial with audio narration and then post it to our staff blog, or send an email link to the screencast.