#12 Jing

What is it? What does it do?

Jing is a brilliant screen-capture tool, with a lovely design and integrated features which enables recordings to be shared easily.  It can be used by teachers and students alike for demonstrations, presentations and, most interestingly, for providing feedback. 

Once Jing is downloaded from screen-capture specialists, TechSmith, a bright orange sun sits on your computer screen ready for you to capture anything you want.  Select the size of the window that you want to share and start recording.  Anything you do or show within the window is captured. You can talk over the recording (microphone input) or take sound that is playing from your computer (stereo mix).  
Or you can simply capture an image.

 This video was made using Camtasia Studio 7, another Techsmith product.

Jing is entirely free, although I do recommend purchasing the inexpensive 'Pro' version, which allows for Webcam recording, saving in MPEG-4 format and instant sharing on YouTube and 10 x times as much storage space (20GB) on the server.

Screen Capture of a screen capture

Once a video capture has been made it can be instantly viewed or shared via screencast.  Uploading is quick and sharing is easy because as soon as the video is processed an automatic link is copied and pasted to your computer's clipboard.  This can then be included in an email, placed in a document or anything you are sharing with a potential viewer.   You can also set the share option to send you back an 'embed
code' for inserting directly into a blog or other webpage.

Note: Jing also has its own blog, which details the history of the Jing Project, and has news, advice and more.

Relevance to language learning?

Jing has major relevance for being used both in and out of the classroom.  It is probably the most useful tool for ELT available right now, having many articles written about it and is the most popular video on Russell Stannard's TeacherTrainingVideos.com. 

Grammar feedback

One critical area which has so far not been discussed much, with the previous 11 tools, is that of feedback.  Screen capture software such as Jing enables a teacher to actually take students' work (for example, an essay they have written), do a commentary on it and visually point to any errors on screen.  The capture is not limited by size because the teacher can scroll up and down the work, highlighting, changing or whatever is needed to clarify where a student has gone right or wrong.  This is much more powerful feedback than simply scrawling comments, in different coloured ink, on a students' paper, hoping that they understand what it says.   It can provide better quality and in-depth feedback in a motivating way.  In addition, the teacher can control the amount of feedback given which would be different if a teacher had a face-to-face chat with each student about their work. Finally, a student can replay any link repeatedly in their own time until they understand, rather than pretending they have understood at the time of the feedback. Therefore, it potentially saves loss of face for both teacher and, especially, student.

It also has huge possibilities for students to build upon what they have been taught in class time.  By giving the tool to the students, they can practice new vocabulary, use it more effectively in context and produce work that is easily shareable or able to be assessed.

How can it be used?

The possibilities are almost endless for how Jing can be used in ELT.  The key point to remember, when asking the students to use it, is to build in a structure or framework for using it during class, such as pre-teching vocabulary, showing examples or practicing techniques.  Here are a few examples of how Jing can be used:

Teacher -> Student

•  Show websites for the students to go to.
•  Demonstrate how to search for and use something on the Internet.
•  Highlight the pronunciation of words in a vocabulary list.
• Demonstrate general grammar points or regular mistakes which a class are making.
• Give advice on writing structure, e.g. paragraphing and cohesion.
• Giving feedback (as stated above) on individual students' pieces of work.  
• Correct students' work or give guidance to the student for them to correct their own work.
• Show model answers and give explanations as to why they are.

Idea: Get students to do sport commentaries in pairs

Student -> Teacher

• Submit speaking homework/assignments, following a classroom activity.
• Talk about a picture or photograph they have taken, again following a classroom activity. They can use their mouse to point to different elements.
• Present a timeline of their life (for older students) or describing their family (younger students).
• Using a webcam, perform an interview or role-play (in pairs).
• Used as a reflection tool by students to record their thought progress when doing an activity or over an entire course. 
• Using a webcam to perform a 'show and tell' style speaking exercise - e.g. 'this is an award I won for being the best swimmer in my year at school'.
• Commentating on a sports clip. e.g. of their favourite football team scoring a goal, or on a tennis match, in which one plays the commentator and the other one is the summariser.  These terms are intresting, as in the classroom, you could try to elicit the difference between the two.
•  Voicover - a lot of fun can be generated from getting pairs or groups of students to do a voiceover in one style of a TV or movie clip which has an entirely different style.   I give the examples of the 'Dubbed Hitler' set of clips, taking sequences from the movie, 'Downfall', and producing a 'mashup' of different styles to comic effect.  Star Wars, Star Trek and other sci-fi greats are often targets for this kind of exercise. Students could be shown examples and then they could go and make their own, turning the volume down on the clip and creating their own soundtrack!  Can be varied depending on culture, level etc.

What limitations are there?

There are no limitations really for the numbers of ways that Jing can be used.  Giving individual feedback , as described above, can be quite time-consuming so, despite the benefits, teachers may be reluctant to spend time using it.

The tool, however, only allows, five minutes of recording time for each capture.  The free version also restricts saving the video in SWF (flash) video format only and 2GB worth of free space.  Check the Techsmith website for up-to-date news on this as might be changing soon.