Using Jing to give feedback

(http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html)

What is it, how does it work?


Jing is a simple and free piece of software that can videotape the images of everything happened on your computer screen. Simultaneously, the video will also record your voice or any other comments made by you. When Finish recording, the video tape can also be easily uploaded to the server and shared to others on internet.

Some ideas of how we can use this tool

• Mark students' writing by colour on the screen, then use Jing to give students feedback by videotaping the screen and recording your comments. Pass the cursor around to the specific points that you are commenting on. Upload your video and share the address to your student by email.
• Use Jing to produce and build mini-lectures and share it with the learners. E.g. produce a video tape to teach 5 words on a daily basis and share it with the students; make a video to teach a short piece of the latest English news everyday and share it with the students; make and build your videos of mini-lectures about certain grammar points, send the corresponding video to the students when they make a certain type of grammatical mistake.
• Teach students how to use Jing, then ask them to record themselves reading a passage on the screen and send it back to the teacher. The teacher can then give them feedback about their pronunciation and intonation.
• Teach students how to use Jing, then ask them to watch a short video, next mute the video and let students to imitate the dialogue by using Jing to record. Sometimes it is a good idea to let students mimic and mock the conversation.
• Teach students how to use Jing to make voice commentary. (e.g. football commentary, picture commentary, act.) 

Why is this tool good for English language learning/teaching

• Teachers can use it to give students more personal feedback in the light of their learning style.
• It is more efficient to give voice feedback, so it saves the teachers a lot of time to delivering the same amount of information.
• By using Jing, the teachers can produce approachable, attractive and clear feedback by communing the the image to their voice.
• In terms of speaking activity, this is a great tool to promote and support students learning autonomy.
• Teachers can also use Jing to facilitate distance learning.
• Jing is a very simple tool, so it is easy to learn and deliver the videotape.

Limitations and points to improve

• It can only record for 5 minutes each time.