Notable Screen Capturing

On January 2, 2012 Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers posted Three Ways to Mark-up Webpages and Share Them.  In that article one of the applications that he mentioned is Bounce.  Bounce, so named for the bouncing ball the moves across the screen while you wait for your screen to be captured, is both free and extremely easy to use.

At the home page enter in the URL of the web page that you wish to capture and click Grab Screenshot.  As soon as your screen is captured a small box pops up asking you to enter in your name.  Once you do that your mouse becomes a small + that you click and drag to surround those items on the page about which you wish to comment.  Once a frame is created the size can be altered and it can be dragged around on the page as well as deleted.

As I was drawing frames around the various points on the screen capture that I wished to bring to my readers attention, I had the original web page open on another tab so I could toggle back and forth between the two.  When you have a particular point on the page framed a text box appears.  When users want to read your comments all they need to do is mouse over the frame.  Once you have the selections made and annotated go back to the top of the page to enter in a title. (You must have at least one note on a page in order to save it.)

Then click on the save button in the upper right hand corner.  A unique URL for your personalized screen capture is generated.  You can immediately share this link via Facebook or Twitter.  When I selected to share it with Facebook it took me to my login.  Once I logged in, another screen appeared with a thumbnail of my screen capture, the URL link and the opportunity to comment before it was posted to my wall. 

When you are introducing a new resource to classes what a great way to direct them to specific items of importance on a page.  With an annotated screen capture students can work at their own pace; going back and forth between the original and the link that you have created.  Anyone that you share the link with can comment on the screen capture also, save their comments and share this newly annotated page with others.  Using this free web 2.0 application could not be easier and there is no registration. 

Here is the link to my screen capture--The Official Site of the Iditarod. 

Images can also be uploaded and annotated.  Here is a link to the annotated image of the central portion of the library media center.  This might be pretty handy when labeling images for a project.