Rise, from Articulate Global, is a web-based system for course creation and learning, featuring a library of imagery and a collection of modular, customizable lessons on business topics relevant to every employee that can be mixed with the user's own content to develop custom courses faster.
$399
per month
Snagit
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Snagit is screen capture and recording software from TechSmith, that lets users capture the screen and camera, add additional context, and share images, GIFs, or videos across preferred platforms.
We have utilized Articulate Rise for our primary curriculum design platform for multiple years. Although it can look pricey compared with other free options, they do a great job of supporting nonprofit use and more cost-effective. By doing so, they continue to be the best in the industry when it comes to value relative to cost with a nice suite of content creation tools that can easily create an out-of-the-box online curriculum while still being easy to navigate for traditional teachers who may be extremely knowledgeable about curriculum development but not tech-savvy. The product could benefit from more content formats and activity types (doesn't seem to have been updated in years) and more authority and control over color/visual palettes and style.
Let's say you are on a webinar or online meeting and want to take several screen shots of what is on the screen and save all of them. Rather than opening Windows snipping tool (or other free products) and needing to save each one as fast as you can, SnagIt saves all of them and you can go back and delete the ones you don't want. Capture the entire screen quickly or do a region for only a portion of the screen. Very handy. SnagIt also provides easy ways to add your edits to the screen shot in a professional way. Rather than trying to "hand draw" a circle around the item you want to bring attention to, you can use professional tools for circles and rectangles to highlight a specific area for someone to see right away when looking at this screen shot
Being able to take screen captures quickly and with just a keystroke is a prime feature. I took several screenshots just yesterday to show folks, which saved me from taking the time to meet with [...] everyone.
Obviously recording and sharing video is Snagit's strength. It does this as well as any product I have used. It is not an editor but there are a lot of capture features that cover just about any situation.
One great feature that Snagit has is the ability to pull text from a capture. We don't use this a lot but when it is needed it is a huge time saver.
The settings and tools within Snagit are intuitive and easy to find.
I think that the tool is excellent for what it is being used for. I particuarly like the ability to capture content from the screen whilst using the scroll wheel on my mouse. It is very annoying when your try to capture something with grab and you can't scroll which leads to multiple images
It's button centric for easy access to every feature. Everything allows undo! It works like any other standard Windows application. Everyone can be a professional without having to select every feature yourself by using the built in styles with just one click of a button in most cases. Every button is clearly labeled too.
I've actually never had to contact support as the tool is easy to use. One aspect is that they upgrade and send email notifications of the upgrades. They don't charge extra for upgrades and their enhancements fall in line with the way we use the tool. We haven't had to submit any upgrade requests as the tool already does what we need it to do.
It's a simple next next finish install. The SnagIt Library in the user profile should probably be backed up to make sure they have access to their old screen captures. We frequently will go back to previous captures and add context bubbles etc. when software changes to show the "old" vs "new". Also, go to SnagIt's website and download the additional Stamp Sets for the user. These are terrific. I wish there was one download to get them all, but you have to download and install them one set at a time. It's worth it - especially for training how-to's.
We chose Articulate Rise because it was the best balance of offering multiple design tools and embeddable content without being obnoxiously priced. Because the course design also ensures SCORM-compliance, whatever we create can easily be embedded in learning management systems later on. We looked at some more robust platforms but the type of tools they offered required a level of coding and technical expertise that would have left those same tools unused by staff. Meanwhile, many free services have some features but make it hard to create a truly cohesive, unified course experience (as opposed to disjointed activities and readings that essentially just get "collated" online). In this case, you really can build a great, linear, holistic course without spending an arm and a leg.
PhotoShop is of course a very powerful image editing tool. But, the learning curve is steep and all the tools and settings aren't necessary for our needs. Snagit is a streamlined solution for capturing videos, creating gifs, and editing images. (It also supports capturing screenshots, including scrolling/panoramic ones, but we use a different tool). Snagit's ability to capture images + videos and immediately open the editor to edit those images or videos makes the entire process faster, simpler, and easier. We've raised the possibility as a team of switching to PhotoShop, but for now I prefer using Snagit for our needs.
