Jing

Jing


About it:

• It's free!
• It allows you to take a screen capture of a selection of your computer screen, in which you can record anything that shows on your computer screen.
• Allows you to record audio for up to  5 minutes.
• So easy to send, you just type in the email address that you want to sent it to!
• You can share any of your Jing screenshots on Twitter, Facebook etc. by pasting the link.
•  To emphasize an idea a couple of tools are available to help you in stressing your point, such as an arrow, a rectangle, a highlighter or a text box.

Significance:

• It's a great tool that helps teachers support their students with extra information when they are at home.
• Mainly used as a tool to provide feedback/correction to students. Homework, projects, etc. could all be assessed using Jing (Multimodal).
• A great tool to establish connectivity and collaboration between teachers, students and students with each other (Constructivism). Teachers when providing corrections of an assignment to their students using Jing, the voice of the teacher plays a crucial role in establishing solid ties.
• Provides privacy of assessment to the students. For example, the students have done oral presentations, the teacher doesn't have time to provide all the comments and corrections to the students. The teacher could write down his/her notes while the students were giving their oral presentations and after class the teacher would use note all the comments on a word document , explain the corrections/suggestions using Jing and send it by email to the student.
• Provides motivation, where shy students would feel less anxious when using at home, recording themselves speaking!
• Could be used in distance learning/teaching contexts.
• It's great for all levels.
• Develops all four learning skills. Students get constant feedback on how to improve their writing skills. Speaking skills are developed since students can get the chance to send recordings for the teacher to listen to and to assess. Listening skills could be also developed, in which the teacher provides the students with constant pronunciation activities, narrated stories etc. Jing allows students to read out passages and send to the teacher to correct/assess.
• Allows students to be creative when preparing presentations using Jing.

Suggestions:


In Classroom:

• I can't actually think of many activities of using Jing inside the classroom. However, teachers could use Jing while presenting an important point in the lesson, for example, a difficult and important grammar exercise could be selected using Jing and the teacher records the explanation/solution and its all saved. 
• If the class has a blog, then the teacher could post all the screen shots of the explained exercises.
• This would allow students to review any of the exercises at home (connected classroom)!

Outside Classroom:

• Jing could be mainly used to assess homework, projects etc. Students send the assignment/ project to the teacher. The teacher selects the section that he/she wants to correct or comment on and starts adding audio. 
• Jing could be also used by teachers to support their students with extra exercises, activities etc. that could aid in their language learning. For example, a teacher could provide daily/ weekly pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar exercises to the students. The teacher would have a word document with the exercises/activities/ words noted down and audio would be added. The teacher would explain for example a grammar exercise, provide the pronunciation of words etc.
• The teacher could also assess the students after  giving a oral presentations. Since  the teacher doesn't have time to provide all the comments and corrections to the students. The teacher could write down his/her notes while the students were giving their oral presentations and after class the teacher would use note all the comments on a word document , explain the corrections/suggestions using Jing and send it by email to the student.

• For students with reading difficulties, the teacher could select weekly texts and read them out using Jing and send them to the students to listen to. On  the other hand, students could record themselves reading and send the recording to the teacher. 
• Concerning the development of students speaking skills, Jing is a great tool that allows students to record themselves speaking about a particular topic that the teacher might assign.
• Students could even work in pairs at home, prepare a role play, interview etc. and send to the teacher.
• Students and teachers could use flicker to extract the pics. that they need and use Jing to record a project, presentation, homework etc. 

Shortcomings:

• Each recording could last for only five minutes.