Mrs. Jing-a-ling Balances Equations!

Tonight I created a podcast, well, really a screencast, using jing:

2010-07-12_2044

AWESOME, right? I can't believe that I made that movie!

If you have no experience with jing.com, I'd suggest you check it out. It's free download (or you can pay for jingpro) and it allows you to capture any image on your computer screen. If you capture video, it records whatever it sees on the screen while you capture. If you narrate, as I did, it also records the sound. It was so stinking easy! Once you're finished, you can save it to your computer and also to screencast.com where you can edit, share it, and more. They have the privacy settings that I love (many levels too!) and tutorials. It's great. Love jing!

Having made this one tutorial, I might make more of them and use them to assist struggling students or to get absentees caught back up. My teaching style is very conversational, so I think my students would appreciate that I am talking and showing them the lesson on the SMART board -- just like when they are at school. Of course, my husband says that this process will make my job extinct! I hope it takes more than 16 years for that to happen! It would be even better if students created the videos using jing because then I could evaluate their understanding of chemistry topics AND use the videos (assuming they are good) to help students who are struggling. By creating the videos, students would be working on mastery of NETS-S standard #2 that states that students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media and communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats. Or they might be working on standard #1 that states that students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology. Students apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes.

It was very exciting tonight to learn something so easy and that students would find to be so helpful!