What are the roles and responsibilities for those who hope to embody the ideal of global citizenship? Professors Jo Beth Mullens (Geography) and Pru Cuper (Education) co-taught a 17-day field course to the Sacred Valley in the high Andes of Peru, where 10 students in KSC’s Honors Program engaged in group service learning and individual research related to their personal interests and major fields of study.

From the course syllabus:

“Designed to immerse you in Peru’s culture and environment, this course offers an opportunity to engage in international research and hands-on service learning projects which focus on health and environmental problems facing rural Peruvians, particularly those living in the Andes Mountains.  Readings, discussions and reflective writing assignments will occur both on campus and in Peru and will focus on investigating the roles and responsibilities of those who hope to embody the ideal of global citizenship. Within this critical investigation, we will explore the distinction between the perceived and the actual needs of others—what the visitor/”helper” determines necessary vs. what the host/”recipient” may want.  Through this critical lens, we will examine America’s role as a world leader, including a comparison of values in the U.S. and Peru, and the pros and cons of bringing change to a culture much older and very different one’s own.“

Portable technology:
Through the use of video, MP3 interviews, photos, and Twitter, students were able to digitally capture their immersion into the Peruvian culture. Periodic “tweets” (140 character updates also know as ‘microblogging’) kept parents and other interested parties up to date on the various daily activities and provided an archive that students can later refer to such as this gem:

“Today, there is a strike in town. The roads are blocked with large stones, children are out of school and a peaceful protest is underway.”

The archive of tweets and the end-of-course reflection questions helped students to analyze their assumptions about “place” and how those assumptions are shaped by culture.  In this 21 minute video students’ respond to questions that challenges them to assess their knowledge, values, and skills and how they may have changed because of their time in Peru.

Let’s imagine that you’re correcting a student paper and you note an error.  You wish your student was right there so you could just talk briefly to her… but you can’t, so you pick up your pen and start to write in the margin. You note her mistake and ask a few probing questions to try and help her for her next version of her draft.

STOP!  You can provide meaningful auditory feedback to your student by using Jing desktop video tool.  You can record your comments (you will need an external microphone or your computer must have a built in microphone)  and upload the video with one click.  Your student will get her paper with a url embedded as a comment near the the area that needs attention. Now she can hear your feedback in the context of the problem.

Jim Glading, adjunct professor at Southern NH University and Daniel Webster College used a Jing video to give feedback to a student who needed help with a citation for a paper.

Jing is s a desktop video program that takes a video of what is happening on your computer screen and allows you to do a voice over at the same time. There are many uses for Jing videos. You might use it to:

• Tour a great website and point out areas that might warrant special attention. Example: http://screencast.com/t/OaPnTE68s

• Explain project directions – Writing succinct directions can be difficult but when you add a supplementary video with voice over you’ve made a complex task simple.  Just display the written instructions that you already have and talk your way through them.  Providing a mix of audio, video, and text ensures that you’re instructions are understood by a greater number. Example: http://screencast.com/t/GPiHjq70Aet

• Create a talking PowerPoint – Display the show and do a voice over. Example: http://screencast.com/t/MAxmb1NPUy

And you can use Jing to free up class time. For instance you might want to address mistakes students are making while solving a particular math equation or you might want to introduce a new color correction technique, and so on. In any of these examples you can use Jing so that valuable class time can be used to focus on other areas.

You can post the urls to your Jing presentations in your BlackBoard course site.

Desktop video isn’t new but this tool has several advantages:
• It’s very easy to use
• You can store your videos on the Jing server and just paste the small url in an email, on your class web site, etc.
• It’s free and downloadable by anyone at http://www.jingproject.com/ !

If you would like to learn more about Jing, you can watch this 1 minute introductory video:
http://blog.jingproject.com/assets-jing/gettingstarted/index.html

If you have specific questions about Jing, please contact Judy Brophy (jbrophy@keene.edu).