Jing

Since we are using this in class right now to complete the second part of our Data Assessment Assignment, I thought it would be a good idea to think about how I could use this program to teach students information literacy in the library setting.

As you are entirely aware, Jing is a screencast tool that allows you to walk others through steps on the computer without them actually being present. I can think of several interesting tutorials I could do on navigating the library webpage and databases for students, as well as a few to encourage teachers to explore and utilize the new NOVELNY databases. To be honest, it would be very useful for me to create those tutorials, since I am not completely familiar with the new sites. Actually, if we are being completely honest, I am not really familiar with any of the databases our school uses. This past year was my first year and I felt entirely too overwhelmed to learn something on top of everything I was learning at UB and in trying to do the job I was woefully underprepared for. I was actually just verbalizing ideas about tutorials, but I think I may do this for my teachers and students. My OPALS page allows me to create tabs for various users on my library webpage, so I could easily create a teacher tab and have links screencast tutorials for each database. New summer goals!

I like that Jing screencasts have to be five minutes or less. I feel that that is a long enough time frame to fully explain at least one topic and a short enough time frame to not lose your audiences attention. If you are explaining something complex, breaking it down into five minute time bites is actually a pretty good idea. It gives  your audience time to try out what you just told them before learning the next part, but also divides it up adequately so they can quickly reference something if the forget one aspect of the tutorial, rather than having to skip around in a forty minute presentation to find the relevant part.

This is a great link I found that has some helpful hints and suggestions for using Jing. I really appreciated the idea of using Jing as a feedback tool for student blogs or online presentations.

Jing is free, but you can upgrade to the pro version if you prefer to be able to upload your videos to youtube.

When you download Jing to your computer, you must create an account. I don't see anyway of doing this easily with students, since it would already be downloaded on the computer, so all the work would be saved to one giant account. Still, I feel that this tool is effective enough for teacher use to warrant an inclusion in tech tools that I will be using in the future. (Hopefully the near future if I can get up the gumption to do the database videos!!)