My fling with Jing

According to the timeline I developed for this inquiry project in Web 2.0 tool exploration I should have completed my time with Flikr and Picassa. Astute readers of this blog (ummm, hi Joanne and Jennifer) will notice I have deviated from my timeline proposal significantly. It was only natural to overlap Diigo with Jing; really, it just happened. When I initially planned out my time with Diigo I intended it to be exclusive on-on-one time, but no one seems to have gotten hurt by my shared affection. Time flies though, so now that I have to leave Jing in the upper right hand corner of my screen, rather than actively open on my desktop, I should get back on track and return to Flikr and Picassa. But I can't. Storytelling seems to flow so nicely from Jing. So I'm off to visit Little Bird Tales and Voicethread. But first, the Jing affair...

Before I ventured into the screencast world I thought, as I always do, that it was something super techie and it was really going to stretch my capabilities. Was I wrong! It is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, as my daughter's teacher says. . . . except for those hours of my life I will never get back trying to figure out where my clipboard lives on my Macbook Pro. . . .

You see, TechSmith, the company that developed Jing, shared this little tidbit with me on their Jing tutorial page: "Now that you have your new Screencast.com button, you are ready to capture images or videos as usual, and click the button you just made to have embed code copied to your clipboard" (TechSmith, 2011). So I dutifully searched for my clipboard. I remember PMD (Pre-Mac Days) when my clipboard could be called up in a word processing program, but this simple process seemed to elude me on the Mac. After several frustrating searches in the Finder and then on the Screencast.com page looking for this bloody html code that was supposed to be ON MY CLIPBOARD, I finally, accidentally, figured out that it was hiding, where I could not see it, on my clipboard. Make sense? Yeah, not for me either, but when I hit "command + V" the embed code appeared in my draft post. Thanks be to the tech gods!

After this slight glitch Jing swept me off my feet. I captured a screencast for the Grade Five students to help with their inquiry project on diseases,


and one for the Grade Nine students as an at home refresher for an introductory lesson on Diigo.


All of these are hosted on my school library wiki where I have posted my Jing experiments for real time use.

Jing, you were just what I needed. 

Carina Olsen (Kat's Photography)

References
TechSmith Corporation. (2011). "Embed Jing content using Screencast.com." TechSmith. Retrieved from http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-jing-embed-content-using-screencastcom.html?requestsource=productredirect&redirlang=enu&redirproduct=jing&redirver=2.0.0

I've been cheating on Diigo

I feel like I have developed a good relationship with Diigo, but I need to tell you, it is not exclusive. You see, in order to demonstrate my learning I've had to master the art of the screenshot, and in so doing I have kind of fallen for another Web 2.0 tool.

Hard.

Actually, to be completely honest, I am in love with this new tool. Is it because I get to hear my voice in video captures? Or because I can precisely set the crosshairs to capture the exact portion of the screen? I'm not sure at what point I started pushing Diigo to the back burner, but it's happened, despite my best intentions to give it my all.

We'll still be friends, I promise.

Next post: My new love and I go public.

Why does online success surprise me?

I celebrate every digital achievement: from publishing a post on my blog to manipulating html code to shrink a screen capture, and now this . . .

Diigo will send bookmarks directly to my blog for publication!

Gr. 9 Epic Works

The Tain Bo Cuaillnge 

Explanation of the Irish Epic "Tain Bo Cuailnge".

tags: epic poems poetry tain bo cuailnge 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

I continue to be amazed by what I am capable of in the online world. It may be small potatoes to some, but it is epic to me, in that cheesy, teenage slang use of the word. To culminate my experience with Diigo, and to ensure that I do not lose track of the progress the grade nine students are making in Diigo, I have added a widget to the right hand side of this blog, right underneath my Blog Archive. I can follow the new content they add to their own Diigo Group, thanks to the Teacher Console which allowed me to set up protected student accounts. With this introduction to Diigo, in a safe and controlled environment, it is my wish that they continue to use this practical Web 2.0 tool.

Richardson (2010) worries that "it's not technology that's causing a decline in critical thinking, it's our lack of understanding of how to use technology well" (p. 94). I have taken on the responsibility to ensure that I understand how to use certain technologies, and that I teach and share this knowledge as widely as possible. Thanks for the play, Diigo! Until next time . . .

References
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful Web 2.0 tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.