To compliment upcoming workshops I’m teaching, here’s an updated re-post from last spring.
I’ve been Jing-ing like crazy lately prepping for a D-I-Y presentation at MLA 2009 in Springfield. If you don’t know already Jing is a FREE program that can take screenshots or make “movies” of whatever is going on on your desktop. It’s a great to show folks “How-To” use an online resource like say InfoTrac or OverDrive or EventKeeper.
Video is saved and presented in the Flash format and you can store your videos online at a realted site called Screencast. Each of your videos has it’s own URL, or you can link or imbed them from your own website.
- Click here for a collection of NMRLS “how-to” videos on Screencast.
Jing also takes single screen shots which you can store online for FREE at Flickr, here’s my collection of Jing tips on Flickr (also linked below).You can also annotate these images before you upload them to highlight or add notes.
Everything I mentioned above is FREE!
Run, don’t walk, to your nearest internet and download Jing now!
OK, so there may some expenses involved … you need a microphone unless you want all your videos to be silent movies. Pretty much any mic will do and if you’re lucky you have a laptop or netbook with mic built-in. NMRLS has USB mics to loan out to our member libraries, just contact Scott, click here to see all of the NMRLS loaner equipment & gadgets.
There is also a Pro version of Jing, it allows you to save video in either Flash or MPEG4 format as well as direct uploads to YouTube. It costs $14.95/year, not bad for a few more bells & whistles. The nice thing about this version is you can edit the video afterward, add another voiceover or a backing music track (see my tips below for another way to do this), as well as link to it off you own server, you don’t need to use Screencast or YouTube.
Here are a few of my YouTube NMRLS How-To videos:
Here are my Jing videos on Screencast.com (via my delicious.com account):
It’s easy, it’s fun, it can be time-consuming …
But, it’s informative, it helps your users, and it’s easy and it’s fun!
Scott's Jing Tips
personal stuff, tech stuff, library stuff 