Jing Danya Leebaw presented at the Minnesota Library Technology Conference on March 15, 2010 about the screen recording software Jing. She discussed what Jing is, how it works, where to get it, who hosts screencasts created with Jing, potential drawbacks, and why a librarian would use Jing. She concluded by providing her contact information for anyone with additional questions.
8. Why would I use Jing? Image from U.S. National Archives Flickr Photostream, http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3660047829/
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Notas del editor
Jing is a f ree, screen capture and screen casting tool getting praise from a lot of librarians. It’s a Techsmith product from the makers of Camtasia and Screencast.com, companies experienced creating screen capture tools for academic use. I was introduced to Jing at this conference last year and have been using it ever since. We shared it with a faculty member about a month ago and now he is using it to return papers (recording his comments). I’ve used other screen capture tools but my favorite aspect to Jing is its incredible simplicity, ease for getting started, but also high quality for the user . Today, I will briefly discuss 1. What Jing is 2. How to get started, and 3. What you can do with it.
The free software available for download at Jing enables you to: 1. Capture images on your screen, copy and paste these into an email, document, or site 2. Add captions and notes to the image you’ve captured 3. Capture a short video (with or without sound) of what you’re doing on your computer, upload or save this video, and share it with others. Show examples here of each of these things.
Jing also hosts your screen captures and screencasts, up to 2 GBs of storage and 2 GBs of bandwidth a month. As you can see, that goes pretty far! You can use multiple log-ins in order to have different libraries (personal and work, for instance). I can create multiple folders for my captures and edit the access settings for the folders (for instance, make them password protected). I can also feed a folder into RSS. Show an example of this.
Jing is simple but there are some drawbacks. In order to offer a free or very inexpensive tool, Jing starts and ends each video with their own watermark which some librarians find so distracting or problematic as to be a deal-breaker. Videos are also limited to less than 5 minutes. I view Jing as a “quick and easy, doesn’t need to be perfect” communication tool to add to my instructional and communications arsenal. I love that it’s free and so simple, and didn’t take me long to learn. I don’t need to find a place on my college’s web server to host it so I’m willing to take some of the branding. But I understand the concerns. If you want a more advanced and complex tool, Techsmith also offers Camtasia or Snagit.
To download Jing, simply go to jingproject.com. You will follow the download instructions and you will also set up a Screencast account. After you have downloaded Jing, it works from a small “sun” that appears in the upper right corner of your screen (for Macs) or the upper center (Windows). By default, the Jing sun launches when you start your computer unless you specify otherwise.
Starting a capture: - You will roll over the cross-hairs to capture your screen for either image capture or the video you want to capture. You will select your size, click to capture an image or start capturing a video. When your image is ready or you are done recording your video, you will have several options. If it’s an image, you can copy and paste it directly into a document, email, etc. You can add a caption and write on the image. For an image or video, you can save the file directly or initiate the upload to Screencast.com. If you’ve uploaded it to Screencast, once the transfer is complete, you can then go to Screencast.com, log in, find your uploaded file, and get the link to share with others. The history keeps track of the images and videos you’ve captured. You can save the files again, edit the images again, share to a new location. The history is specific to the computer with Jing that you are working from. The more button takes me to help, preferences, default account. Show examples from help.jingproject.com
Photograph of Women Working at a Bell System Telephone Switchboard, http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=1633445 I’ve found that Jing makes communication simpler. I’ve incorporated Jing into my work in a number of ways. Jing is useful for email reference. It’s easy to make a Jing video or screencapture – basically, a couple of minutes to a few seconds for an image –it’s not much additional work to include in an email to a student or faculty and makes my communication far more effective. In fact, it saves me time that I would otherwise spend writing out steps or finding words for a complicated visual concept. I can simply summarize the steps and instruct the student to follow my “Jing” and there won’t be that same confusion about what I mean by “small button in the upper-left hand corner of the screen.” Here is an example (CORA): http://www.screencast.com/t/ZmVhOGI3Zj - I have used Jing videos for communicating problems to vendors. When something isn’t working, rather than explain in writing the problem to the vendor, I simply make a Jing and they can see for themselves what isn’t working (and share it with their tech people). Here is an example with LexisNexis: http://www.screencast.com/t/ZmIzYjJmNGY - I also have included Jing in my LibGuides for sustainable tutorials, steps I find myself explaining in appointments a lot (like how to use LexisNexis: http://gouldguides.carleton.edu/politicalscience) - I also use Jing to easily grab images when creating Powerpoints!