As part of my "learning about Blackboard" course, I played with Jing. While it isn't perfect - there's no version available for Linux and it is difficult to see where your mouse is when making the video - it is a great tool for those who don't want to fuss around at all with the more technical side of taking screenshots, adding comments, and making videos. And it comes both in free and pro (14.95 per year) versions.
But will I use it again? Personally, I've created very few screenshots and I've always used the "Print Scrn" button on the keyboard. When I've wanted to add more info - well, it's always been for some webpage or blogpost anyway so adding text underneath it isn't a problem.
However, this is a great thing to use for reference guides and classes I may teach in the future. I would want to know what I can do to make the mouse pointer more visible while I'm making the video though. I also had a few glitches while using the software. I would have expected the things I created to remain in the history after I closed the program and opened it later (and I could have sworn that I'd saved the first screenshot I made to the computer). Wouldn't things uploaded appear under "History" when the program automatically signed you into your account, even on a different computer? I can't even find where it's been apparently uploaded, in either the program or on the website.
Also, putting the extra bits on top of the screenshot wasn't completely fiddly-free (I learned the hard way that things overlap based on what order they were inserted and to edit something that wasn't the last thing you inserted, you have to move it to get the text configuration bar to pop up).
Video link:
http://www.screencast.com/users/deafelephant/folders/Jing/media/e16e2038-becf-4c46-8cd6-eda44e7fa0ce
Screenshot:
EDIT:
Aha! Figured it out about the missing first screenshot and how to access things uploaded. I clicked on the link for the video, then wondered if my uploads were at screencast.com. Signed in and there they were, with the appropriate links.
The embed links had height and width way too big to fit comfortably in my blog post, so I halved each of the dimensions and it's still a bit too big but much better. Blogger can't seem to upload the video from computer and I can't embed a video from someplace other than youtube.
Here's the other screenshot I'd made (I had made the one above because I thought I'd lost this one):
But will I use it again? Personally, I've created very few screenshots and I've always used the "Print Scrn" button on the keyboard. When I've wanted to add more info - well, it's always been for some webpage or blogpost anyway so adding text underneath it isn't a problem.
However, this is a great thing to use for reference guides and classes I may teach in the future. I would want to know what I can do to make the mouse pointer more visible while I'm making the video though. I also had a few glitches while using the software. I would have expected the things I created to remain in the history after I closed the program and opened it later (and I could have sworn that I'd saved the first screenshot I made to the computer). Wouldn't things uploaded appear under "History" when the program automatically signed you into your account, even on a different computer? I can't even find where it's been apparently uploaded, in either the program or on the website.
Also, putting the extra bits on top of the screenshot wasn't completely fiddly-free (I learned the hard way that things overlap based on what order they were inserted and to edit something that wasn't the last thing you inserted, you have to move it to get the text configuration bar to pop up).
Video link:
http://www.screencast.com/users/deafelephant/folders/Jing/media/e16e2038-becf-4c46-8cd6-eda44e7fa0ce
Screenshot:
EDIT:
Aha! Figured it out about the missing first screenshot and how to access things uploaded. I clicked on the link for the video, then wondered if my uploads were at screencast.com. Signed in and there they were, with the appropriate links.
The embed links had height and width way too big to fit comfortably in my blog post, so I halved each of the dimensions and it's still a bit too big but much better. Blogger can't seem to upload the video from computer and I can't embed a video from someplace other than youtube.
Here's the other screenshot I'd made (I had made the one above because I thought I'd lost this one):
And here's the actual video:
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