Choose Your Tool- Jing

To Whom it May Concern,

There is a GREAT tool that I think every school should be taking advantage of; it's called Jing. Jing is free and can be used as a very effective teaching tool. Jing uses a tablet computer or smartboard for students to write or draw on and records their voice, as well. After you finish recording everything, you can then play back the video, which will show whatever was drawn on the tablet or smartboard and plays the voices along with the video.

There are many ways that you can use this tool in the classroom. You can use Jing to assess what the students know through collaborative learning projects. Students could show what they have learned by creating a lesson to explain the concept being learned. Even better, you could have groups of students do the teaching by assigning each group different areas of any given topic and let them be the teachers. They could create a plan to teach what concept they have been assigned, record the lesson, and then play it for the rest of the class. It is a great way for them to self-assess as they explain their thinking and what they have learned. The more work that the students do, the better! That is, if it is productive and they are gaining something from the experience, of course.

The teacher could also use Jing to simply record parts of lessons that the teacher was wanting to show to the class, visually, and then play that for the students. This could also be done if you knew, in advance, that you would be absent from school. By recording parts of a lesson and having the substitute simply play the lesson for the class, would make the substitutes job a lot easier and more importantly, you know that your students would be getting the exact information that you want them to. Also, if you were to incorporate Jing into your lessons, it would be a great way to address both the visual and auditory learners.

Lastly, Jing would be a great way to possibly communicate with other classes across the country, or even the world. Anything that you have recorded could then be put up on the internet and you could, potentially, receive comments from other people. I believe this is a wonderful way to introduce students to knew ways of doing things, through technology. It would be disappointing if we did not take advantage of free, educational tools, such as Jing.

Thanks,

Susan Bale