Tech Video Teaching

I ran across a blog posting on PC World last week highlighting a screencasting application called Screencast-O-Matic. It's fairly simple to use (you need Java installed on your machine), and if you have a mic attached to your computer (or an internal like the one on my laptop) you can easily add sound to the hi-def video you create. If I have enough time, I might start creating some screencasts for some of our resources. Why?

Last week I had a customer that regularly needs assistance dealing with tech problems. She needed to access businesses in the area in a particular field. At first I forgot that Reference USA was the place to go, but once I remembered, we were off and running. Only problem was that demonstrating the resource several times still isn't enough for it to sink in when someone is learning for the first time how to navigate all the options. Maybe a quick screencast saved to a file-sharing site and the link e-mailed to the customer would do? I found this, but if the video doesn't show the steps the customer needs, its not nearly as useful. Customers need to work with a product to learn its logic, but when they're not as tech-savvy, should we really say: "Here's how you use this. Let me know if you have any questions," and flit off into the stacks or resume browsing that never-ending "stack" of Firefox tabs on the computer desktop?