The ITGS internal assessment (IA) requires every student to submit a screencast for their project. This screencast is a great opportunity to demonstrate all the hard work you have put into your product and criteria A-F. It is a chance to highlight your work, to show things that cannot be seen in criteria E (for example, drop down menus, mouse roll-overs, queries, and other items that are interactive), and to prove that your product works.
Your IA screencast must show your final product (not “step by step” as you make it). It must include audio narration (remember that the examiner may not be able to read the text on your screencast – it may be too small or it might not be in English). 5 minutes is a good amount of time for a screencast – moderators may not check beyond this time, but if you use significantly less time than this it is unlikely you will cover all pertinent points.
You should not spend a great deal of time editing / re-recording your screencast to get a “perfect” version – just relax, speak calmly as if you were having a conversation about your product, and talk slowly and clearly. If you make a REALLY big mistake, keep recording, wait a few seconds, and then repeat the bit you messed you. You can edit the mistake out later. Don’t start all over again! Apart from this, the screencast should not be edited.
Planning the ITGS project screencast
Before you create your screencast, write an outline of what you are going to say. I think it is best to do this as bullet points rather than reading paragraphs of text. Things you should include:
- Areas of your product that demonstrate your advanced skills
- Areas of your product that are interactive and can’t be seen in criteria E
- Areas of your product that demonstrate fulfillment of your client’s requirements
Examples and good key phrases
These key phrases might help you check that you are on the right track:
“This is where I processed the images using….”
“The layout here was achieved using CSS drop-shadow..”
“My client wanted an embedded map of…..”
“I included the drop down menus because my client….”
How to create the screencast
I would recommend using one of the tools here. Before you record the screencast, do a test to make sure the video quality is high, the microphone volume is correct, and your voice can be heard clearly.
- Screencast-o-matic (Online) (my personal preference)
- CamStudio (Windows only)
- Jing (Windows and Mac)
Example ITGS project screencasts
Here are two example project screencasts from my students. Both of these projects scored top grades in their exam session. You can read more about these projects and view the students’ work in the post Two ITGS project examples which scored 7s.
Finally, here is another good sample screencast. Note that this is not from the IA of one of my own ITGS students. Thank you to the teacher who posted this link on the OCC.
Finally, remember that you have put a great deal of time and effort into your IA: the ITGS project screencast is a great opportunity to demonstrate to the examiner all of the hard work that may not be immediately visible. You should view this as an opportunity to show off your internal assessment and highlight areas you are proud of.
Very Helpful
Wow great explanation ! I am sure my students will find this very useful !!!!! 🙂
I hope so – mine found it quite useful.
Nice! Thank you for this.
How do you submit the screencast? Do you put it in the top level folder of the cover page or in criterion E or upload online and link it? It’s not really clear how you actually get it to the examiners.
You’re right – it isn’t very clear at all. You should put it in the top level folder (the same folder as the cover page). You should also name it with your candidate number and surname (I’m not quite sure why, since it is in a folder which is also labelled with these details!). So the name should be something like:
0007_Smith_Screencast.mp4
Hello! If the project is a digital magazine and not a website, what can i do for the screencast?
That’s a bit of a tricky one. I haven’t had a student complete a DTP project for a while to be honest. The purpose of the screencast is to highlight the functionality of the product and the techniques you have used that might not be immediately obvious from the documentation you’ve written. It depends on the techniques you have chosen to implement, but it should be possible to highlight aspects such as the consistent look and feel, the use of high quality images (e.g. by zooming in to show there is no degradation), and so on. The best advice is to go through your list of techniques and ask yourself how you can prove they work.
Thank you sir for that info! The only problem is that since i’m doing a dtp project, and have already completed it except for screencast, i’m worried if i don’t score a lot of points for this project. But anyway, thank you for that information!