This morning I spotted a couple of tools that I thought I should try and I’m glad I did because I quite like them both, although with some reservations. The two services are Amplify & Jing. Watch this video created with Jing for a brief intro to both. (Sorry, WordPress won’t let me embed, so click the image!)
Jing is a free service from techsmith.com, the makers of the popular screen capture software Camtasia. Capturing and publishing are pretty straightforward, once you know how – I did struggle to find things initially! The free service (not suprisingly I guess) restricts your storage (2GB) and your monthly bandwidth (how much you upload, also 2GB) so there are limits. The above 2-min recording used up 7.5MB of my allowance (not quite 1%). I will definitely be using it again for videoing and will be interested to see whether storage becomes an issue. For images I imagine I’ll stick with my long time friend MWSnap
Amplify uses the WordPress blogging platform and is a spin-off from Clipmarks. On the whole it worked well for me, although it can be a bit fiddly clipping the bit you want, especially if there is a link involved – it’s easy to click the link rather than clip the link!! The blogging side of it was great (it’s wordpress!) and it’s very easy to tweet what you clog… oh dear. I used my Amplify Clip Blog today to create a collection of posts on e-Learning coverage on various HEA Subject Centres that are relevant to the LSE. I don’t think I’ll be using Amplify again as a personal tool (except to review today’s work!) but I can see it could make a great tool for a digital literacy or other teaching activity. For now, I’ll be sticking with Diigo / Delicious and my memory of what I liked on the page!
Both worth some of your time.
