Student use of Jing for Low Threshold Voice-Over Presentation Authoring: Turning Students into Educators

If you get a minute, check out this student presentation on Durkheim and Suicide done in Jing for our Venture Fund ECS154 class

http://media.dartmouth.edu/~bbuser/production/ECS.154.01-FA08/Anna.King_virtual_presentation.swf

You can read read our e-mail exchange where the student talks about her experience:

From: Anna King <Anna.King@Dartmouth.EDU>
To: Joshua Kim <joshua.m.kim@Dartmouth.EDU>
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 1:28:20 PM
Subject: Re: request to share your voice-over-presentation on Durkheim with Curricular Computing folks

Dr. Kim,
I would be delighted to share my video with others. Please feel free to post it on whatever you need.

I was pleased with the Jing program. I felt that it was incredibly user-friendly (i.e. I did not even have to read the FAQ's or instructions beforehand). I had no troubles re-doing my voice-over a few times and there were no problems with the microphone. I did not know what to expect when I first started, but I was pleasantly surprised to find how easy this tech feature was. I tried to make my presentation as simple as possible, realizing that nobody likes to hear someone talk too fast and nobody likes to read slides with too much text. Also, seeing as Jing only allows 5 minutes, it was nice to limit myself in that way - I knew how long I had and I began to think of ways to tighten up my explanations. Sometimes my professors post videos/podcasts like this that we have to go look at outside of the class. They are incredibly long and boring. Maybe if they used Jing, they'd learn how to tighten up the presentation and stop rambling on - overkill!!

I did not utilize many of the other options that I'm sure Jing offers (like using my mouse to point to what I was talking about). Though I like this feature, I do think that it distracts the audience from what I'm saying - they focus on the cool movements and graphics without actually listening. I think that making an effective presentation is all about knowing your audience. For me, I know my graduate classmates well and know that they have the attention span of two-year-olds, sometimes. Thus, I thought it was important to be direct and speak clearly - with plenty of "thinking" pauses (which I think are also key).

I think you are right, that teaching something is the best way to learn. I hope this helps! Feel free to let me know if I can be of any more assistance. Thanks, and take care.

Sincerely,
Anna King

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 10:38 AM, Joshua Kim <joshua.m.kim@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Hi Anna

I was wondering if you would mind if I shared your wonderful voice over presentation on Durkheim with some of my colleagues here at Dartmouth.

http://media.dartmouth.edu/~bbuser/production/ECS.154.01-FA08/Anna.King_virtual_presentation.swf

I actually want to put your presentation up on our internal Curricular Computing Blog http://ccblog.typepad.com/weblog/ - as I think your work demonstrates the potential for this sort of voice-over tool to have students create and share knowledge.  This is a direction we want to go in, as we know that we all learn best when we teach.

If you have any thoughts about this process, and the tools you used, I'd also appreciate hearing any feedback (good and bad!)

If you would rather not share I'd understand, but you should know i was very impressed.

Josh

Comments

[Anthony Helm]

A good first step. I've been impressed with Jing for over a year now as an early beta tester. The output quality is very good and the process is very easy. The only real downside is that the post-recording options are very limited, so it is ideally suited for those times when there are no second takes.

I've also used Jing extensively for still screenshots on documentation projects.

Thanks for sharing, Josh.