Crystal Clear Instructions with OmniDazzle and KeyCastr

I’m teaching my students how to post to a blog this week (so far they have only commented). Tom showed me OmniDazzle last spring, which makes guiding my students to specific links or pages unbelievably easy. OmniDazzle has plenty of plug-ins that create highlighted windows, flashlight focal points, and other fun attention-getters at the tip of your pointer.

As I was thinking of my first day of working with The Outsiders Blog, I realized I would need to walk them through step by step. “But how will I make sure the kid who doesn’t know how copy and paste keeps up with the class?” I asked myself last night, and followed up with this thought: “If only I could display keystrokes on my screen.” Enter KeyCastr. A simple program that places a small translucent screen on your desktop that displays every key you hit. So, you want to teach someone how to take a screen shot? Start up KeyCastr, take a screenshot, and the keystroke combo is displayed for all to see. I used the OmniDazzle/KeyCastr combo today with amazing success.

Both programs are for Mac. Sorry PCers, but if you use something comperable, please share!