Discussion and Reflections of Jing

Hearts of Worship - Heart Series 
Gwen Meharg
Watercolor-22 x 30 unframed

I think I love Jing. I loved creating my screencasts. It's just such a great way to provide information to others. I love that only my voice and screen were recorded. That's so much better than having video footage of me. In my Process of Jing post I went through the process of how to record a screencast. You can find the screencasts I made in my What I was Jinging all Week post.

Explanation of what I created:
I wanted to create videos for the youth, parents and leaders that I work with in my church. The girls that I work with have an extensive goal setting program that they can work through from ages 12-18. The program was just recently put online and I really think that the girls would love using the website. The videos I made provide the basic information that the girls, their parents and leaders need in order to start the online process.

Reflections:

jbweir

As I explained in this post, I just randomly starting making videos and soon realized that I needed to stop what I was doing and start over again. It didn't take near as much time to create the videos the second time. I had a much better idea of how the information would flow and what information would be in each video.

It took some time to decide what exactly I would include in each video. They could only be five minutes long and I wanted to be clear and concise. I could have made hours worth of video, but who wants to watch that? I had to decide what were the basic things that needed to know in order to become familiar with the website. After doing my first round of videos, I had a pretty good idea of what would be most beneficial to demonstrate. Ideally, I would have had one of my girls or another leader watch my videos and see if they wanted any more information than I provided. (I'll ask for feedback when they actually use them because it's fairly easy to edit and upload to YouTube)

The hardest part of working with Jing this week was the constant feeling I had that I needed to edit my screencasts. I'd change what I was saying mid-sentence and then my whole sentence wouldn't make sense! I wasn't able to edit all of my ungrammatical sentences but I am satisfied with the results. I also wanted to cut out some of my sentences because they just added time but no value. 


I used the 30 day trial of Camtasia to do some editing. The time FLEW by. I couldn't believe I  spent 4-5 hours editing. This project wasn't about editing jing. It was about using Jing. I don't think one NEEDS to edit when creating a screencast. You just have to accept the imperfections. Ellyssa Kroski says "being "real" and unscripted can be charming" and I am hoping others agree! But in my case there were names and birth dates that I needed to block out. After spending all of my sons nap-time blocking names out and feeling a little annoyed with myself over it, I made two decisions:

1) I was only going to edit what I absolutely had to.

2) I had to quit being paranoid about the information others could see about me. The info about me that I was blocking out could be accessed in other places besides my video, so it wasn't really a security issue. But I am  paranoid by nature. Of course I'm going to worry that my middle name will show up everywhere. But really? What other Ortensia Norton (I am still getting used to having my full name out there!) is there in this world to be confused with? Having my middle name on the screen isn't going to differentiate me from another Ortensia Norton!!

Applications to my Personal Life

As a learner, I learned that I can use Jing all the time! 

As a parent, I could create screencasts for my daughter. I could have created some for her when she wanted me to teach her how to create a blog post, how to bookmark webpages, write an email to her cousin, or comment on her cousins blog posts. Not only would have she had a reference to fall back on, but she would have thought the videos were so cool and would probably want to create some herself. 

As part of a family I could make screencasts for my dad whenever he needed something explained to him. I just signed him up for Gmail and he'll probably have some questions. I just discovered that I can make screencasts on my iPad! Since it it similar to the iPhone, I could make a screencast for my dad demonstrating how to use the apps he'd like. In the near future (once this class is over!), I am going to start doing Family History via the web. As it will be a collaborative effort, I can learn the website first and then make screencasts for my family, showing them how they can help out. 

The other week a friend was asking me how to create a blog because she wanted to start some for her sons. If I'd time I would have made a quick screencast showing her how to do it, instead of just sending her to blogger.com. 

Application to Teaching and Learning:


The other day, I found this on Twitter:

@ruth_ayresRuth Ayres

Remember we can't expect to teach things once and be done. For example, focus is something we will teach again & again. #carlanderson

3 Nov via Twitter for iPhone

Retweeted by oinorton and 1 other

I think this is so true! I usually can't remember things with only one exposure to it, and I know my students usually needed a few exposures to just about everything I taught them. That is why I think Jing could be so useful in the classroom with students, and in the library with students and teachers. As a classroom teacher or librarian I could make all sorts of screencasts. I could make some on Google Apps for Education, how to access the internet and specific websites that were pertinent, how to use a SMART Board, how to start a blog or keep up a classroom webpage. Any videos that I thought would be useful to my PLN, I could upload to YouTube. 


Greg Notess  and 

Mikael Jacobsen 

have some great opinions and suggestions on how to use screencasts in education.

One of the best resources I found on how to use screencasts in schools was a publication by TechSmith, owner of Jing. I already but this resource on my blog. You can see it in my 

Congratulations to the following Educators!! You bet I'll be adding you to me PLN post.

And now I am moving on to playing with Blurb.