Tech and Ed Play With Web 2.0 Tools: Part 2 Jing and Other Screencasting Tools

Jing is a screencasting tool with tons of creative potential in education.  It belongs both in the hands of instructors and students across content areas and ages.  This post briefly highlights Jing and other screencasting tools as a part of the Tech and Ed Play With Web 2.0 Tools series.

Getting Started With Jing:  Last year, I was a guest blogger at the Teacher Challenge blog.  Here'sa LINK to my post. It’s where I suggest going to get familiar with Jing!  It walks you through downloading it, gives examples of how I use it as a self introduction, to return feedback to my students, and more. 

More of My Jing Examples:

How-to’s and diections:  Most of the video recording I do on this blog is with the Pro version of Jing, such as this video about online timelines like dipity.  I also find it useful for describing weekly expectations and assignments in my online classes.

In the hands of students: Here's another post about a project from my adult ESOL vocabulary class.  Within a matter of minutes, students created a Jing video using my laptop.  Their example is embedded in the Glogster along with more of their creations, but it can also be accessed via this direct link.  Oh, and I can’t make a post without highlighting my favorite use of Jing created by a 4^th grader.

Other Screencasting Tools: There are also a growing number of similar free screencasting tools. A few of them are highlighted under on my screencasting page.  I have found that my students who want to work from home don’t always want to download Jing onto their computers, so these offer some alternatives.

Here’s an example of a similar screencasting tool called Screen-O-Matic combined with Go Animate that one of my former College of Ed students, Jessica Coleman, created about SLA.

 

Screencasting Apps and Additional Resources:  It's also great to see some similar screen capturing apps for ipad such as Screen Chomp and Show Me.   As these become increasingly more functional, they allow us to use iPads in digital storytelling, etc. with relative ease.  One of my favorite ESOL bloggers, Silvia Tolisano, who blogs at Langwitches offers a lot of examples and step-by-step guides for using screencasting tools in the class.  Check out her blog and search for screencasting tools, digital storytelling, and ipads. 

Discussion:  What experiences do you have using Jing or other screencasting tools?  Feel free to share links to your creations or contact us if you would like to use this blog as a platform to share some of your students’ creations if appropriate.

Happy screencasting!

ESOL and Multilingual Sites Mingle with Content Areas

My College of Ed. classes are exploring ways of making language comprehensible to English language learners and bilingual learners in the content areas.  They have looked at many ways of embedding meaningful language opportunities and of reducing the linguistic load in all of the content areas.  Using technology and sites such as the following are a few of the ways to do this.

Multilingual Sites

Larry Ferlazzo has some suggestions on his list of The Best Multilingual and Bilingual Sites for Math, Social Studies, and Science.  The Multilingual Science Glossaries by Glenco for middle school and high school look promising.

Little Kiddos

For young learners and beginners, Kindersay is a site worth exploring.  Thanks to Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers and his post which highlights additional sites for language learners.
  
 Digital Storytelling all ages

With a bit of creativity and careful planning, digital storytelling has amazing potential in integrating language and the content areas.  Proof resides in some of the ideas and lesson plans my students have created.  Little Birds Tales seems to be young learner friendly.  I recently signed up for an educator’s account at GoAnimate and am exploring it.  I have watched my own kiddo extend her classroom language learning in some exciting ways at home on this site. (A thank you to her teacher!)  

Quiki Online Talking Encyclopedia

I have been following Quiki since it was in beta and am not sure how to categorize it.  It’s interesting to say the least.  Take a look.  What do you think in terms of language development and content integration?  Here’s a link to Quiki on a topic of interest to me.

Vocabulary

I am teaching an adult ESOL vocabulary class for beginner to advanced levels.  Here are some vocabulary sites that I recommend to them on our class glogster. (More to come soon about glogs.)

Other sites we are exploring are found on our ed sites tab, which we continually add to.  I laughed at my memory the other day when I thanked one of my students for giving me a site I recommended on this blog.  This is a conscientious attempt to highlight and apply these sites in posts like this one and Kacey’s Storyline Online post.

 

If you have any recommendations for additional sites or want to share ways they are working in your class, leave a comment or drop us an email.  Happy exploring!

top photo by  joomlatools