Jing is hands-down one of my favorite tech tools. It is free, easy, and has an endless amount of uses. Jing allows you to quickly take a screenshot or record a screencast (a video of your computer screen). The screencast can be up to 5 minutes long and, if you have a built-in microphone or a headset, you can record narration. Once finished, you can either save to your computer or upload to Screencast.com, which will produce a link. Simply send the link to someone, and all they have to do is click it and they can view!
Let me give you a few examples of how Jing can be used. Personally, I use it to record quick and personal tutorials for instructors. So, I’ll get a question such as, “Angie, why can’t my students see their grades?” All I have to do is make a recording with Jing, and I can send this to the instructor:
You could also use Jing to prepare quick tutorials for your students. Are you going to send them to the Internet to do or find something that you know will produce tons of questions? Be proactive and provide them with some guidance. This is especially helpful in online courses.
One of my research professors at UNL is using Jing to provide electronic feedback to us on our papers. To do this, he simply does a screen recording to highlight and talk about certain parts of the paper. And, before you start thinking this is an online class, it is not! Even in a face-to-face class, you usually hand back a paper with notes written here and there. Verbal feedback such as this is much more meaningful and helpful to the student, and Jing makes it quick and easy to do.
So, here are the how-to details. First, if you are using a Concordia computer, you will need to log in using your LocalAdmin username and password to download Jing. If you don’t know what that is, you will need to contact Computing Services. Second, CLICK HERE for a brief and extremely helpful tutorial that will have you creating a capture in minutes. Third, in the rare situation where you find that someone is unable to open the link you send, tell them to upgrade to the latest version of Adobe. Finally, if you have any questions about using Jing, please do not hesitate to contact me!
