Check out this video of Shauna Hedgepeth. You can see how she helps her math students reduce “Brain Flush” by using Jing. (Camtasia works for this too!)

We’ve all been there. While in class or in a training, you feel like you’ve got a good handle on something, but then later--even as early as that evening--something’s not quite clicking. If only there was an easy way to get a “re-cap” of the lesson!

In school, one consequence of brain flush is students arrive the next day with uncompleted homework and you spend part of your precious class time answering questions and rehashing yesterday, instead of moving ahead.

Shauna’s little Jing videos both help her students, and increase classroom productivity. Students in need of a memory refresh (and don’t forget about absent students) can click a link and watch the video. Best of all, it’s free and easy to do.

You might be thinking, “But I don’t have an interactive white board or a webpage like Shauna does!” Don’t worry, you don’t need much to make a big difference! Let’s break this down into the basic requirements.

Things You Need

1. Download and install Jing. The free version is more than adequate for what you will be doing. It works on Mac and PC, and your computer doesn’t have to be close to top-of-the-line to run it.
   
   Note that Jing and Jing Pro are limited to five minutes in length. In a way, that’s good. Would your students watch something longer than 5 minutes hoping to find the part they need? If needed, try to break your content up into multiple videos, so students can click on the area they need.
   
   
2. A microphone. We recommend a USB one, but if you have the little plastic one that came with your computer or an internal one from your laptop, it’ll do. In fact, that’s all Shauna uses.




3. A means to get the videos to students. Ideally, you want videos in a location where students and parents can watch them from home. The easiest way to do this is upload your video to Screencast.com, and share the link with students. This way there are no files to mess with and you don’t have to put the videos on a network drive behind your firewall.

You can post the link on a blog like Shauna does, on your class website if you have one, or email it out. Worst case, you can write the little random URL (hyperlink) on the board and students have to copy it down on paper. Be careful because upper case “i” and lower case “L” look the same. Here’s what a sample Jing URL looks like--the bolded part is the random part: http://screencast.com/t/5HJwW4OiU

Bonus Stuff

1. An interactive white board is nice, because you can record the lesson in real time. You also might record some student interaction. It's easy to write freehand too, which can be especially helpful for math. Even without an interactive white board there are a number of ways to draw freehand on the screen. Here’s a segment from TechSmith’s The Forge Webcast that shows a number of them.
   
2. Better microphone, like a wireless mic, or multi-directional microphone. If you’re moving about the class or trying to capture student explanations, you want to have a way to pick up any audio that’s not by the computer recording the action.
   
3. A blog or webpage like Shauna has is nice because you can display many days or weeks of lessons, and perhaps even recycle them for next year. If you don’t want to set up a free blog, two really good alternatives are to keep updating a Google Doc and share the Doc, or try http://www.delicious.com.
4. TechSmith makes Camtasia for Mac and Camtasia Studio for Windows. These products allow you to record indefinitely as well as edit and produce your video in numerous ways. Learn more.

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