Last semester all lectures were 100% online. Very challenging, especially for me, who uses a computer with the Ubuntu operating system. It isn’t very easy when recommended online teaching software only compatible with Windows/macOS. In this article, I will share some useful software for teaching online for Ubuntu users. While teaching online during this pandemic, I have been greatly helped by this software. Hopefully, it is useful for readers out there.
Simple Screen Recorder
The first software I want to share is screen recording software. Because when teaching online, sometimes I have to make video tutorials for my classes. In my opinoin, Simple Screen Recorder is the best choice. The features I want to highlight:

- Simple. Super simple. I have tried several other screen recording software on Ubuntu, but none are as complete and straightforward as a simple screen recorder.
- Can record by a window, follow the mouse, or a specific area on the screen. Another alternative that I’ve ever done to make a recorded video is to use Zoom. But in the zoom, there is no option to capture a particular area. It’s quite useful when we want to record with a “cheat sheet” on the screen.
- Video quality settings are also very easy. I usually use “youtube” quality with a frame rate of 30. The resulting video will have reasonable quality with reasonable file size. A video of approximately 10 minutes will be around 25 MB in size.
- The feature I like the most is their short cut. Yups, I can set my short cut so that the record-stop-save process can quickly be done behind the scenes. As long as the application is running, even though it is in a minimized state, I just need to press my shortcut button, and then the software will start recording the screen. I press it again, and then the video will be saved. Super simple.
I experienced the drawback with Simple Screen Recorder when I wanted to record an audio source from a laptop (e.g., I want to displayed sound/video). The audio source cannot be changed in the middle of the recording. For example, suppose you want to record audio from a computer and a mic. In that case, you have to separate it into two different videos or use other software, for example, Zoom or Kazam (which, in my opinion, is not simple).
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