Up and Running, Jing Style

Never before in history has innovation offered the promise of so much to so many in so short a time. --Bill Gates.

This week's goal is to continue exploring Jing, particularly with respect to using screencasts to assess student work. I discussed the idea of using Jing for student assessment in a recent post.

Because I am working at an online school, providing feedback in this more personalized format could replicate having a teacher-student conference. To that end, I have emailed a couple of my students for permission to share this experiment on my blog (with the understanding that I will not refer to their names anywhere).

While I wait to hear back, let's take a broader look at Jing and its possibilities in the classroom. Will Richardson (2010), ed-tech guru, writes that screencasting is "a relatively new medium that...has a lot of promise in the classroom" (p. 123).

This YouTube video shows how simple, yet innovative, Jing's concept is:



Here are two additional resources for getting started with Jing:

1) Chapter 8 of Web 2.0 Tools in Education (thanks to my classmate, Joclyn Beliveau for sharing this link)
2) This detailed screencast tutorial from an ESL teacher at TeacherTrainingVideos.com

Although these tutorials provide orientations to Jing, I find the program very well-designed and intuitive to use. I didn't need much "google it" help to set up Jing and start using it. It was easy as 1,2,3! What I did discover, and I blogged about it last week, was that creating a polished screencast that demonstrates how to use a web tool will take some planning, as well as trial and error.

In the next post, I will explore potential uses for Jing for both students and teachers.


References:

ChannelTechSmith (2011, October 25). Jing overview video [video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5FLsSUTFYyw

Embi, M. A. (2011). Web 2.0 tools in education: A quick guide. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/58594601/Web-2-0-Tools-in-Education-A-Quick-Guide-by-Mohamed-Amin-Embi

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousands Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Stannard, Russell (n.d.). How to use Jing screen capture tool [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/Jing/index.html

Using Shortcuts in Google Reader

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --Leonardo da Vinci

Google Reader is an essential tool for decluttering your online workspace. I now have 35 subscriptions in Google Reader, most of which are related to my Masters degree, with a few personal interest blogs thrown in there for good measure.

This post on Gigaom highlights a few ways to get the most out of using Google Reader. I tried out the suggested keyboard shortcuts. These are a few that I like:

Shift+? = a list of shortcuts
j = move to next item
k = move to previous item
space bar = page down
f = full screen mode
v = view original post

Because I am in the habit of saving useful blog posts to Diigo, I haven't been using the star (press s) function. However, I may try it out to highlight posts that need a more careful read.

I also checked out my "Trends" for the first time. Very interesting. Free Technology for Teachers is my "most read" blog, along with the blogs of my classmates. Blue Skunk and Cool Cat Teacher also rate up there. What else is getting my attention? Cute overload. I can't seem to help myself.

References

Foster, D. (2010, September 10). 5 tips for getting the most out of Google reader [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://gigaom.com/collaboration/5-tips-for-getting-the-most-out-of-google-reader/

Current Events #6: Apps for Autism

I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them. --Mark Haddon, Author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Specialized apps for the iPad are changing the way students with Autism are able to communicate. This clip from 60 minutes, which was embedded in a post on Free Technology for Teachers, is a must-see for educators.



It is particularly inspiring to see the way that language apps are providing a conduit for expression. Up until now, I've focused on the iPad for personal or regular classroom use, but this post and video has broadened its implications for learning.

References

Byrne, R. (2011, October 24). Apps for autism -- a 60 minutes story [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/10/apps-for-autism-60-minutes-story.html

Sughrue, K. (Producer). (2011, October 23). Apps for Autism. 60 Minutes [Television broadcast]. Washington, DC: CBS News.

Screencasting...Bruised, but not Beaten

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship. --Louisa May Alcott

I sat down this morning to create my first 5 minute screencast using Jing. I figured it would take me a couple hours to get it done and blog about it. Four hours later, I finally have something to show for myself.

Screencasting seems simple enough. Jing captures a video of your screen as you talk through using a web tool. I wanted to show my English 12 students how to set up a wiki using pbworks.com for their independent novel study. How hard can it be?

Well, the tool is easy to use, but screencasting is not, at least not the first time you do it. First, everything has to run smoothly on your computer. For example, I was setting up a demo account, so the activation email had to arrive immediately, and if it didn't, I had to start again. If you misspeak, you have to start again. If you click on the wrong buttons, you have to start again. If you run out of time, you have to start again. And finally, after you finally get it right, if you hit cancel instead of stop, you will pull out your hair, and have to start again.

I discovered five minutes go by really quickly. I had to break my screencast in two in order to show the kids what they needed to know.

This first screencast took about ten attempts:



I am very relieved to report that the second screencast only took me two attempts:



My screencasts are now safely embedded in Moodle for the Grade 12s and I think I need to go have a coffee!

P.S. If you place your mouse over the screencast as it is running, you can click on the tiny yellow computer screen icon at the bottom far right corner, and it will go to full screen mode so you can see it more clearly.

What the Tweet?

Exchange is creation. --Muriel Rukeyser

When I asked my sister what a hashtag was, she said she thought it had something to do with Charlie Sheen. I understand her confusion on the topic; up until a couple months ago, I would have thought it had something to do with breakfast.

My professors in the Teacher-Librarian program strongly encouraged us to use Twitter to build personal learning networks. Will Richardson (2010) writes that Twitter is a "powerful professional development and communications tool" that has become a "running river of conversation and ideas" (p. 86). So, I resurrected my long-ago abandoned Twitter account, downloaded TweetDeck and started learning about Twitter in earnest. At first, I added a short list of recommended people to follow, and this got me up and started. But, it wasn't until I started following hashtags that I really started to understand how Twitter can connect you with a broad base of enthusiastic and tech savvy educators.

A hashtag is basically a way to search and label tweets according to topic. By using hashtags, you don't need to find who to follow first. Instead, you can follow the hashtag stream, and occasionally select tweeters to follow whose interests match your own. Here is an article that I found useful in terms of understanding and finding education hashtags to follow. The hashtags I am regularly checking are: #edchat, #edtech, #engchat and, of course, #tldl and #edes501.

Needless to say, to really get the most out of Twitter, you need to start doing some of your own tweeting, not just following others. In the past few weeks, I have taken the plunge. At first, I tentatively tweeted messages to people in my course, then I added hashtags to my tweets and, this week, I started tweeting out links to my blog posts using hashtags. This morning when I looked in my Direct Mention column in TweetDeck, I saw that my blog link tweets had been retweeted several times by twitter-ites in the twitter-verse. Wow! I'm sharing ideas with teachers all over the world - one retweet even came from Burundi. A new sense of collegiality is forming and it's being powered by Web 2.0.

References

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousands Oaks, CA: Corwin.

The A-Z Dictionary of Educational Twitter Hashtags. Edudemic. Retrieved from http://edudemic.com/2011/10/twitter-hashtag-dictionary/

Six Ways to Use Goodreads in the Classroom

We read to know we are not alone. --C.S. Lewis


Here are six ways you might use Goodreads in the Classroom:

1. Use the student group feature. There are well over 3000 student groups underway at Goodreads! Teachers can use the group feature to post topics or extend classroom discussion. Students could use also use this feature to post their progress with independent novel choices or to post reader response journals. Separate lit circle groups could be established to keep the in-class discussions going. Student groups would be an excellent option for extra-curricular book clubs at your school.

2. Research reading selections. Students can use the overviews and user reviews to select potential novels and add them to their to-read bookshelf.

3. Have your students join the Reading Challenge, set their targets and record their progress.

4. Use the fan feature for active goodread authors and follow their updates and posts. This would be a great option if you chose a recently published novel for your class and were lucky enough to establish contact with the author ahead of time. Perhaps the author would be willing to answer a few questions the class comes up with.

5. Discuss the public rating and review features of the site to have your students generate the criteria for creating meaningful book reviews. Your students could then write and post reviews based on that criteria. Those reviews could be shared, "liked" and commented on by classmates.

6. Use the public discussion feature to have you students post to threads about the novel they are reading. A little diligence would be required here to select threads that are active and worthwhile.

Could you use Goodreads in the classroom? What features appeal to you?

Current Events #5: Will you Hangout with Me?

I think Google should be like a Swiss Army knife: clean, simple, the tool you want to take everywhere. --Marissa Mayer, Vice-President at Google

The Zite personalized magazine app on my iPad is turning out fantastic articles and blog posts under "Education", and "ELearning".

Today's gold nugget is an article from Learning Solutions Magazine entitled "Google+ Hangouts: Six Practical Uses for Online Education." The ability to share your screen to show a student how to use a web tool is one highlight. Another key feature is the ability to open a shared Google document. For my online students, this means I could meet a student in the hangout, pull up their paper and discuss it in real time.

Another tool to add to my to-do list!

References

Vest, J. (2011, October 19). Google+ hangouts: six practical uses for online education. Learning Solutions Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/772/google-hangouts-six-practical-uses-for-online-education.