A New Way to Teach Programming

From the makers of Lego's Mind Storm comes a new tool to teach computer programming to children. Scratch is a free download that uses a graphical interface to teach basic programing concepts. Programs are saved in a proprietary file and can be uploaded onto the Scratch website or uploaded on any website using a downloadable Java applet from Scratch.

For more information go to http://scratch.mit.edu/

Scratch makes programming like playing with LEGO bricks

A new tool for teaching children how to program has come out of the computer science education research department at MIT, and is taking the Internet by storm, attracting budding programmers of all ages.

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technorati tags:Scratch, MIT, Programming

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Lowcost Method of Recording Lectures

The Jing Project could provide a cost-effective means of recording what is on computer screens. This Tech-Smith offering could be useful to teachers to record lectures and demonstrating new concepts for students to replay later. This would be especially usefull  for teachers with the new "Smart Boards" installed in recently new classrooms.



The Jing Project: The 3 Legged Dog Of Screen Captures And Screencasting

The Jing Project is a fairly new screen capture and screencasting tool from TechSmith.

Jing aims to make screen capturing and screencasting easier by providing the one program for both. Usage wise it’s simple to use. The screencasting tool is as good as any I’ve used before; unlike Screencast-o-matic it’s a software based tool and the difference in quality shows.

The Jing Project is free (at least for the time being) so I shouldn’t be to hard on it. It’s software I want to love and was prepared to write a completely favorable review about, until I tried to upload a screencast. Jing only saves screencasts in Flash (.swf). That may not seem like a big thing until you try to find a video hosting site like YouTube that will accept .swf files.

The built in sharing function in Jing allows users to upload their files directly to Screencast.com, a screencast hosting site owned and run by TechSmith; however if YouTube was the United States of America, Screencast.com would be a tin pot failed African nation; it’s horrible. I couldn’t access the test screencasts I’d uploaded via the Screencast.com interface, although I could view them directly. On a direct view there is no code present that allows you to embed the screencast on your site; whether this is only an option for paid hosting plans was not clear as there was no link on that page to a help or FAQ page either.

The screen capture tools are handy and if Flash files don’t bother you, then its a good screencasting tool. Overall the Jing Project is just like a 3 legged dog; you can easily love it, it barks, but it just can’t do everything a 4 legged dog could and should do.