Screen recording with Office Mix

A while ago I did a tutorial on using Office Mix to create a video of a PowerPoint with annotations. You can also use Office Mix to create a screen recording of any part of your screen.


How to create a screen recording

Follow these steps to create a screen recording of the last program that was active:
  1. On the Mix tab, click Screen Recording. 
  2. On the control dock at the top of the screen, click Select Area. The cursor will change to crosshairs.
  3. Note that Audio will already be selected so you can record voice narration at the same time as your screen actions. If you don’t want to record audio, click Audio to deselect it.
  4. Click and drag the area of the screen you want to record. To record the entire screen, click in the top-left corner of the screen, and drag the crosshairs to the bottom-right corner of the screen. You cannot select an area smaller than 64 x 64 pixels.
  5. Click Record. The control dock will slide up and out of view while you record. To make it reappear, move your cursor to the top of the screen. To pin it in place, click the pushpin in the bottom-right corner of the dock.
  6.  Control your screen recording as follows:
  • Click Pause to temporarily stop recording.
  • Click Record to resume recording.
  • Click Stop to end your recording.
The screen recording will automatically be added to the current slide after you click Stop.

How to upload your recording

  1. Select Upload to Office Mix 
  2. On the pane on the right sign in with your School account
  3. Choose if you are uploading a new mix or updating an existing mix, then select the checkbox if you want to make the video mobile-friendly, then select "Next" 
  4.  When your Mix is finished select "Show me my mix"
  5. Adjust the settings as needed, then copy the link to give to students so they can view your Mix.

Applications

Screen recordings are useful when you want to teach a lesson or demonstrate an action that is completed using a computer.
 
For example, imagine you want to teach a lesson about creating charts in Excel. You can create a slide and paste static screenshots of Excel onto it. Or, you can create a screen recording of you interacting with Excel and narrating what you're doing so that viewers can watch a chart being created step by step.

Perhaps your class would benefit from seeing you working through a problem step by step, where they could watch anytime and pause and rewind the steps they don't understand.

You could record an experiment you do in class for the benefit of those who missed it.

There are endless possibilities and tools to do this! Next time I will show you how you can embed quizzes inside your recording.

Here is a video of the whole process: