Jing is much more than a simple visual. You can capture videos of what you are doing right from your monitor. You can ‘film’ offline/online videos and capture nearly anything that shows up on your computer with Jing. It allows captions, highlights, and arrows on the screenshots as well. Jing’s video allows music to be added, narratives, or no sound at all. You can post it in blogs, on websites, in an email link, and more! This is a great tool for visual presentations of any kind.

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Jennifer Bolton is married with two boys, both special needs. She is the owner of the Special Needs in Homeschooling. Jennifer uses free resources for teaching whenever she can, to keep her boys’ interests and to tailor their learning experiences to their individual learning styles and special needs.

Link to Product/website: http://www.jingproject.com/

Description of Product: “Jing is free software that adds visuals to your online conversations. Instead of typing to people, show them what you want…pronto.”

Jennifer’s Description of Product: The product description really doesn’t even touch the surface of what Jing can do. I’ve been using Jing for about a month now and it gets used A LOT. Jing is much more than a simple visual. You can capture videos of what you are doing right from your monitor. You can ‘film’ offline/online videos and capture nearly anything that shows up on your computer with Jing–and each movie is about 5 minutes long. Jing Pro is $14.95 a year! Pro offers uploading to YouTube, faster uploads to Screencast.com, and you can make smaller video files for easier sharing.

Jing also captures that elusive screenshot. I use to hit the PrtSc button and paste it into a word document or other photo software, and then I would have to crop the screenshot to fix it up. Now I use Jing because I can pick just the part of the screen I want. There is no cropping afterward, and I can use those screenshots to make a video! Jing allows captions, highlights, and arrows on the screenshots as well. Jing’s video allows for music to be added, a narrative by you, or no sound at all. You can post Jing on flickr, twitter, in an email link, FTP to a web server, and more!

Homeschool Uses: Jing for homeschooling is beyond my imagination! My boys are extreme visual spatial learners and I make notes for them all the time with Jing. Below is a video I made for my son to study information for his online Geography class. The video allows him to pause and study each page for as long as he needs. I made the video on my computer and emailed the link to his computer. Jing can be used for presentations too. For example, my son used Jing to show me how to make exclusion in Photoshop. He knows more about it than I do! My eldest makes screenshots for his PowerPoint presentations for both his website and his blog. It’s great for visual presentations of any kind (Note: some of the images in the video have blurry words, that is because I made the video smaller to fit in this post, the original video is completely clear).

Content and Safety: When you install Jing, you must create an account with Screencast.com. Both accounts are free and your email address will not be shared. When you upload your videos to share, they end up on Screencast.com. Screencast turns the swf file into a regular video file. The two accounts work together. You do not need to use Screencast.com to do anything else other than to obtain the link and create the publishing part of your video. Personally, that is all I have used Screencast.com for, so I’m not sure what else it can do. If I get a chance to check it out more, I will write a blog review on that as well.

Jennifer’s Experience Using the Product: I haven’t ran out of uses for Jing! I use it for writing on ChoosyHomeschooler. I captured Nikki’s PowerPoint presentation so it could be visible for all of you to see. The most difficult part I had was trying to figure how to share Jing. Once I learned how to do it, it was easy. Just click on the share button and then visit my Screencast.com account. It is in my library. Click on share in the library and I have the option of an url, html tag, html code, or email an invite to the Screencast.com video directly. It was that easy. I have used Jing to help friends figure out how to work blogger, Facebook, and other websites. I think I will always use Jing! I am seriously considering going Pro with Jing because I want the access to the YouTube button, better video viewing (MPEG-4 AVC), faster upload with compacted video file, and the Pro account allows the Jing words on the video to disappear. That would be great for work!

Tutorial or Promotional Video of the Product:

Summary: I love Jing. I have used it so often that I wonder how I got along without it before. It is simple, easy, efficient, and there is no end to the possibilities. Let us know how you use Jing!

Editor’s Note: Check out this FREE online tool for making videos:
Free photo video project for homeschoolers!
Teach Self-Expression by Turning Dreams into Reality, One Goal at a Time, Through Creative Videos.