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Students Demonstrate Understanding via Video

It’s one thing to write a short essay about why one website should be more trusted than another. A student can turn in a complex spreadsheet that might indicate a level of understanding.

But there’s nothing quite like a good old-fashion show-and-tell. Here, students use Jing to record a brief demonstration. It’s a fairly quick activity that will help expose their reasoning and level of understanding. Their finished recording is added to their portfolio.

This example includes an optional extension for teachers with Camtasia Studio. All student demos can be aggregated into a single video with a Table of Contents linking to each student video.

Part 1: The Setup

Students need two things: A computer with Jing installed, and a microphone.

Let’s talk a bit about how Jing accounts work. Every Jing user must have a free Screencast.com account. Screencast.com is the “back end” to Jing. (Learn more.)

Every account requires an email address, and that’s a potential issue for many educators. Some people, especially depending on student age, would rather not having kids creating accounts, messing with emails, etc. TechSmith does not have a great alternative solution for avoiding the email requirement at this time.

Now we need to make sure students have microphones. If you have a laptop, the built in microphone is probably good enough. We’re not looking for high-quality audio here—just need to be able to understand the student.

If microphones are in high demand, this might have to be a center-based activity or scheduled in some fashion. Students can still perform their practice runs without a microphone.

Part 2: Prepare the Students

Before the students click Jing, they should prepare a little outline related to the content they will be demonstrating. For example:

• Evaluating a website for legitimacy and authority
• How to make a certain type of graph in Excel
• How to use particular html tags to create a webpage
• Using a word-processor to enter non-English characters

Some people recommend going beyond an outline and getting into mini-storyboards or scripts. This does tend to make the demonstration clearer and more succinct.

When students have prepared their materials, pair off and do a “run through” with another student. Keep an eye on the clock; Jing has a 5-minute video time limit. The student playing the role of the viewer should ask questions for clarification and provide other constructive feedback.

Alright, let’s record some video! When students are complete, they should email you the link to the video. If they cannot email, they will have to name and save the video to a location of your choosing.

If you think students need help with Jing, you could show them this video.

Download a free copy of Jing for Mac or PC or go Pro for just $14.95 a year.

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