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.

Learn more about Jing
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Talk with other TechSmith Customers, ask questions and give feedback

Meet Rob Zdrojewski. He's a Technology Teacher and Director at Amherst Central Schools in New York. In those parts he's also known as Rob Z. a.k.a. the "King of Jing", but he's also involved with many projects and technologies. One you might want to check out is Amherst Tech TV!

Recently Rob had small groups of students use Jing in conjunction with an IPEVO webcam. (This is similar to a document camera or ELMO if you are familiar with those.) The students reviewed a piece of educational software for mobile devices.

The camera uses a USB cable and displays the iPhone (or Blackberry) on the computer monitor. The students record the computer screen and thereby capture the device's screen.

I thought the quality of the webcam was outstanding, and I thought Rob had a creative idea here. I could see recording paper documents and giving feedback, drawn math problems, specimens in biology, and so on.

Great work students! Here's one example below. And you can view all of them in Rob's Screencast.com folder. I think I'm going to get a couple of these for my kids to use!

David, one of the Web Designers here at TechSmith, shared a creative and time-saving tip with me and I wanted to share. He set up his Mac so that in one click, Jing images automatically open in Photoshop.

The problem he had was he often captures things off his screen with Jing but needs to edit or enhance the images in Photoshop.

The typical workflow is capture, save, tab to Photoshop, open, then navigate to file. It works, but it's a lot of clicks. "Surely there's a better way," thought David.

David utilized Jing's ability to automatically save to a specific destination combined with a little magic from Automator (which is built into the Mac OS). Now, he just clicks the save button, and the image is instantly sent to a designated folder. Meanwhile, Photoshop monitors the folder and opens anything that's in the folder. Neat!

David made an informal video (4:15) showing the process.

Educator Graham Whisen recently posted a great example of using Jing to provide more contextual, efficient, clearer, and personal feedback to students. I particularly like the example at the 2:11 mark in his video. View his post.

I hope you'll check out his post and share it with any educators you may know. If you're an educator and have tried using Jing for video feedback, we're really curious to learn more about what the students think of it. Is it appreciated? Taken for granted? Expected? Despised?

In what situations is video feedback best suited?

I thought this was funny, but oddly practical as well.

A guy here at work is attempting to sell a sink on Craigslist and used Jing to annotate the photo so people could easily see the sink's dimensions.

I thought this was a unique example use of Jing. You just open a photo on your screen and then capture it with Jing and add some annotations for a quick and effective result.

And if you do happen to live in the Lansing area and are in need of a new sink, check out this post on Craigslist.

Sure, we know that Jing videos can be great for quickly and informally showing someone a process or giving feedback. But what about for really important things like sharing and explaining your favorite game at the moment?

I'll share a game that I was addicted to for a few weeks. You can get it for iPhone or just play on the web. It's called Shopping Cart Hero and our former Jing Mac Developer introduced it to me. (Thanks Don...I'm over 400 jumps on my iPhone somehow!) Instead of trying to explain it, I made a 1-minute video for you.

Now that I've "beaten" Shopping Cart Hero, I clearly need another game! What do you recommend? Don't just link me to the game--show and tell me why you like it in a Jing video.

Note that if you have the free version of Jing you'll record videos in SWF format which are not as good at capturing motion and can lead to large file sizes. Nonetheless--I'm sure it'll get the point across.

Here's more information about the difference between SWF and MP4, and here's some information in case you wanted to try and capture system audio (the sound that comes from your speakers). You can see in my video I just turned my speakers up so I could narrate and you can hear the sound in the background.

Marilyn K. McClelland is a Professor at North Carolina Central University. She wrote a thorough article describing how she piloted Jing as a means to deliver frequently asked "Show me How" questions. Students could watch the videos prior to class or office hours.

I especially love this article because of the ways Professor McClelland tracked views, gave surveys and incorporated other data to provide a compelling story. We often hear anecdotally that students appreciate and watch the short Jing videos, but I was (pleasantly) surprised to see some of Professor McClelland's findings.

"This is a startling 1,498 hits during the semester by 31 students! The Blackboard tracking lets me see the number of hits by day and by student. I can see that students often watched the video multiple times on the same day, and several students came back to watch the video again, even after the test."

Having been one of the students described here, I can really relate to this quote as well:

"I know that for every student who comes to the office to ask, many don't ask, or will not ask until they understand the answer."

The great thing about video is that it doesn't judge--watch it as many times as you want until you really master the material.

I also like how Professor McClelland provides a description of her environment and insight into her recording and delivery process.

I hope others interested in Jing and education find Professor McClelland's article published in Educause Quarterly valuable as well!

I had to pull out something important from my Jing History the other day and couldn't help but notice the range of Jings that spanned the "Work-Related" and "Shenanigans" types. After all, Jing is for adding visual elements to all sorts of conversations.

That said, here are some examples of some funny Jings I've seen lately.

• Here's the one I use for when I need to express my approval: http://www.screencast.com/t/lh2dLB7ymMQ
• Don't even ask, I don't know what this is: http://screencast.com/t/Yjk1ZmE0
• Space bumper sticker? http://screencast.com/t/MmFhYWRhNTIt
• You can do videos too, don't forget! http://screencast.com/t/2OmoEPhX

Do you have a Jing or two in your History that shows a lighter side?

Well, we have 5 Jing shirts in need of good homes! (Large and XL only--sorry!)

1. Post your fun Jings in the Comments.
2. Do it by Thursday March 11, 2010.
3. We'll randomly pick 5 winners post the results on Friday.

Note: Use your real email address when you submit a comment because that's how we'll get in touch with you if we need to ship you a shirt.