Screencasting is one of the most important tools in my inventory as an online teacher. I am constantly making screencast tutorials to teach students processes, such as how to send large files, how to develop course content, and the like. It takes as little as a few minutes to make a screencast, and with it I can avoid typing out the answer to the same question from multiple students, as well as avoid the delays that come when students find that they do not understand something right before it is due. Plus, screencasts are a far more effective way to teach a process than a text description. In fact, I expect that when I am having trouble with a process in some outside system, the support section will have a screencast tutorial on that process. A simple text tutorial makes a system look amateurish.
