Jing is very useful for teachers to give a visual and audio representation of a new skill or task for students to complete on the computer. For example, here is a short screencast I made using Jing showing you how I can add a gadget to my blog. Once I made the video, I saved it to Screencast.com in order to get the link. Since I already had Jing on my computer and an account with Screencast.com, the whole process took less than five minutes.
Example using Jing
Other ideas for using Jing in the classroom:
You may have a few good websites that you would like students to use to practice math skills. Problem, they don't need to see the entire page. You can take screen captures of the pages with Jing that contain needed content and then save those pages in a file with Screencast.com. All the students will need is the URL for the Screencast.com file in order to access the pages.
English teachers often have many papers they need to read and grade. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to provide lengthy feedback to students. If you have an electronic copy of the students work or the ability to scan the paper for a digital copy, you can use Jing to give feedback. You could do this two ways. You could take a screen capture of their work and use the editing tools to highlight and make comments or you could make a screencast with audio and make references to areas of the paper while giving feedback to the student orally.
The video below is an example of how a teacher uses screencasting to help students with their homework by making videos of what was done in class available to them on a school Webpage.
Since Jing is user friendly, students can use this program at school or at home to communicate with the teacher or to do group projects.
If a student is having difficulty working in a software program, such as Word or PowerPoint, they can make a screen capture or video to e-mail to a friend or teacher for help. After capturing the image of their computer screen, they can use the editing features to highlight, draw arrows and add text to ask a question. If they have a microphone available, they could record a video and use the mouse cursor and their voice to illustrate where they have questions.
Students can use Jing to mark up an image they have created using another program, such as Paint. For example, students use Paint to draw a picture of an insect. Using Jing, they could make a screen capture and use the editing tools to label the parts.
It is difficult for a language teacher to hear all of their students speaking new vocabulary. The teacher could give the students a digital photograph representing vocabulary words and have students create a Jing video of them pointing to the photograph while saying the appropriate word. The students could then upload the video to Screencast.com to study at home or share with family.
Using Jing for screencasting is especially useful for online learning and for projects and communication with students from other areas of the globe. Not all learning takes place in a classroom, but Jing can be used to instruct and provide communication between students and the teacher via the computer. Teachers of online courses can use Jing to create short tutorials on how to navigate Blackboard or complete a task. If JingPro is available, students can use a Webcam to communicate and work with students in other countries. The ideas for using Jing are only limited by the imagination.
