Screencasting I, Need I Say More

How little I actually knew!

I always wanted to try using this thing that I heard about called “screen casting.” I had an idea what it was but I couldn’t possibly fathom all of the possible implications on education and my life as a whole. I thought that screen casting is simply a way for capturing what happens on a computer screen. Wow how little I actually knew! I had no idea there were so many different types of screen casting software out there. I was also surprised at the many different ways to capture and the different uses for which captures could be put – in particular in my classroom and personal life.

Different types of Screencasting

I started gathering information on this topic I by typing “screen casting” in to Google. To my astonishment, I got 1.2 million hits on the topic. I quickly realized this was not going to be as straightforward as I originally thought. One hit quickly stood out from the rest, 12 Screencasting Tools for Creating Video Tutorials. The reason I liked this was because Sean P. Aune had done the work for me. He found 12 great sites that provide screen capturing abilities to the public and was informing others about them – just like what I am doing with my blog. After reading and trying out many of these great sites I settled on two that caught my attention: JingScreencast-O-matic. Jing immediately stood out because I had read about it in both Will Richardson’s book “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other powerful Web tools for Classrooms and Pam Berger & Sally Trexler’s book “Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World.” Now that my memory was jolted by the reappearance of Jing, I went back into the books and reread the sections that pertained to Jing. I started to think of how I could utilize these tools in my teaching practice and personal life. and

Setting up the Stage for Jing

www.techsmith.com/jing.html

Now that I had chosen the two tools I want to learn more about (Jing & Screencast-O-matic) it was time to set them up. I began with Jing. I used Google to find Jing and was redirected to http://www.techsmith.com/jing.htmlScreencast to provide users 2GB of monthly bandwidth. Screencast also had the ability to make files private to only those people who were invited and had the web address. Even thought this site did provide a safe environment for my students, I decided to use it as a host location for my personal screen captures and saved files for my students on my school district’s online host site. which is the host site and where I was able to download the program. On the first page my eyes were drawn to the top right hand corner of the page where I found the magic button with the word “Free” (Gormely). The next steps were rather straight forward. I clicked on “Free Version,” clicked on run/install and there you have it Jing was successfully installed on to my computer. It was at this step that I realized something very important, but I will tell you about it later on (don’t forget). I needed to create an account using my email account and a password of my choosing. After this information was entered a golden halo appeared on my screen as well as the option of taking the tour of the program. After taking the short tour of the program, I learnt that using Jing I can capture both video and still images displayed on my screen. Armed with this golden halo, I was ready to use the crosshair feature and start taking pictures of my screen and capture short five minute video clips (Gormely). The next thing that I thought about was, “if I am going to use this tool in my class, I am going to need a place online to save my screencasts?” This question was short lived because I remembered what Berger and Trexler said on page 146, Jing had partnered up with

 Setting up the Stage of Screencast-O-Matic

www.screencast-o-matic.com

I quickly discovered that another great screen capture tool was Screencast-O-Matic. While this site was not as versatile as Jing, it was so easy to use and didn’t require downloading (hint hint). All I needed to do was click on the Start Recording button located at the top right of the screen and BAM! ready to go. A dotted box appeared on my screen, using the corners I changed its shape to match what I wanted to record and was ready to record.

I was able to record videos up to fifteen minutes in length and save them right to my computer. This web tool was easy to use and walked you through all the steps, all four of them (start recording, change shape, stop recording, save).

To Jing or Not to Jing?

Overall Jing is a much more powerful tool than Screencast-O-Matic offering more features such as capturing both still images and videos, and providing the users the options of uploading files directly to a blog or other web spaces. However, if you recall my “don’t forget” comment there was one major flaw with Jing; Jing required installation in order to run. As a teacher I do not have the ability to install programs on my work machine and neither to my students. So Jing is not an option that I can use at school; however, I think it is important to note that all the images captured in this post were taken using Jing since I am working on my home computer. Screencast-O-Matic was the more versatile tool to use for me. It didn’t require any installation at all and was entirely web based. The only downloading involved was the downloading of the actual video once it was complete. If you are using these tools on a personal machine Jing is the superior program, but if you are like me and you can install anything on your work computer then Screencast-O-Matic is a great alternate option.

 

 References 

Gormely, K. (2011) Do you Jing? How Screen casting can enrich classroom teaching and learning. The Sage College, Troy, New York. The Language and Literacy Spectrum Vol. 21, 2011. 

 

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful Web tools for classrooms / Will Richardson. Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Corwin Press, c2010.