Jing--a very cool tool

Jing is one cool tool! Screencasting for free. I've written a few, but many of them are GDS specific, like how to deal with our gradebook system First Class email help. Here's a screencast I made to teach students how to record themselves using Audacity. We use this all the time to have students read their work aloud prior to turning it in. Why? Several reasons. We are working on their reading fluency, we want them to read with expression, we want them to revise their written work more carefully. They have to turn the mp3 in with their final draft. This has had a dramatic impact on student writing. Much more so than peer editing, although we still use that.

Note--this is not a professional screencast. If I were afraid to share it with students unless it was perfect, I'd never do this stuff. There's a point where I get a frog in my throat (I hit pause for the major throat clearing though) and another where I can't find the file I want. I like to think these imperfections make it more human and help foster my connection with the kids. To me, this embodies 21st century literacy--try it, don't be afraid to be imperfect, and share. The kids have no interest in making screencasts about schoolwork, but they sure did about some of their gaming features. I tremble to think that there might be some screencasts out there about how to use a proxy server...