Camtasia vs. iMovie

Recently I completed a multimodal tutorial assignment. The project required the use of Camtasia. Though my partner and I had some technical issues at first, we made the tutorial and were pleased with it. (Here’s a link to view the tutorial.)

Shortly after we submitted, I had to make a tutorial for the Online Learning Team (OLT) that was about the same topic — WordPress. This one had to be directed at a different audience, so I made an entirely new tutorial, but this time I used iMovie. Because of this, I feel I’m in a good position to provide a simple answer to the question: Which one should teachers use?

Of course as we know, we should not use technology just because we can (i.e., just because it’s available). In the case of Camtasia vs. iMovie for teachers wanting a simple screencasting program, I vote easily for iMovie. It had just enough features to accomplish my goals without confusing me. I don’t feel that Camtasia’s bells and whistles justify its learning curve for most classroom needs. For larger projects with more stakeholders it is definitely the way to go, but for teachers making projects for their students, I think keeping it simple is best.

Here are a couple other sources on this same topic for further reading:

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/camtasia-vs-imovie

https://www.g2crowd.com/compare/camtasia-vs-imovie