Last night I wrote my first post. Well, I thought, that will fade into obscurity until I tell someone they should have a look at this newfangled thing I’m doing. Wasn’t I suprised (and very excited I might add) to see comments from Alec Couras and Judy O’Connell this morning. Thanks for taking the time to notice – it means a lot to a novice.
I was reading a column by Kate Holden in Melbourne’s Age newspaper and a metaphor she included prompted me to think of the blogging community;
“Conversation irrigates us, and makes us flow in new directions.”
This is certainly true when I think about the blogs I have been reading and the new directions their words have been leading me to . My interest in this was really sparked last August when I attended a five hour workshop run by Will Richardson. In a small group session at the Expanding Learning Horizons conference he took us through dozens of Web 2.0 applications and made us think how we could apply them to our educational settings. One of the applications he showed us was Jing, a fantasic screen capture device that is free from Techsmith. I’ve used it to capture images that I want to use in presentations and I’ve been thrilled with the results.
You can capture any part of the screen you like and can crop the image. Tools are provided to enable you to highlight, write on your screen capture in a text box and frame sections that you’d like your audience to note. Your captured image can be hosted on screencast.com. I have yet to use this facility. I’ve found this to be an invaluable tool and would recommend that you give it a go.
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 
It’s always a pleasure, Jenny, to welcome a new voice to the blogging world – it helps us to avoid the ‘echo chamber’ syndrome where we find ourselves all talking to each other and no one else.
I hope to get to Melbourne one day to complement my visits in the past to Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra. Given the nature of your job, you will get lots of good advice from my good friend, Judy O’Connell. But we all want to hear your advice too!
Jing is a great tool, and one that I use very often with my students. It is so easy to respond to tech-related student inquiries in just seconds with Jing.
Thanks for the encouraging comments. I actually met you John at the ASLA conference last October. I asked you a question at the end of your presentation and then spoke to you at morning tea – you gave me your card. You probably have no recollection of this but your interest in what I had to say meant something to me. Thank you for responding to my post – I’m inspired to continue with this and see where it may take me.
I hadn’t made the connection, Jenny – apologies for that – but I do recall talking to you. You’ve already mentioned the flattening world elsewhere in your blog – isn’t it amazing the connections we can now make both in the physical and the virtual worlds?
I had a great time in Sydney in October, and in Adelaide where I spoke the week before the ACEL event – both the ASLA and ACEL Conferences were superb for me.
I look forward to following your thoughts, and responding to them!