Flipbook Fun

Hi Guys it is that time in the semester that we start our Final Major Project!!

For my Major Project I plan on learning how to draw a flipbook animation.  I have always wanted to make a flip book, sure we all have done the little ones on the side of our pages. But when did it actually turn out like this? First step is learning about flip books. Here is a little history on flip books that you could read through if you would like to learn a little more about them... History of Flipbook Animation.

Thats all for now, cant wait to keep you guys posted on my progress throughout the time I learn how to do it!

Copy your Rights

In any class we ever had to write any essay for we were always told to cite our sources and no plagiarizing or we could fail.  How often are we told how to actually cite a source or actually taught about copyrights of images or texts?  For me I always only had one class per-year that talked about internet safety, but copyrights were never a topic that really came up in my schools.  

As a teacher we have the responsibility to show and be examples of what copyrights are and how we use them. Teachers have the role to play as not only a teacher of their area content but also much more about becoming an adult. 

In each lesson, we as teachers, try to be creative and use different ways to interest our students. In each slid, poster, creation that we use pictures/images in we need to be able to be a good role model and use proper citation of it. We must know the different kinds of legal actions to take in using an image of someone else's. Teachers have to know the difference between complete copyrights, public domain and creative common license. We have to understand when we can use certain things and what course of action we must take in regards to each category. Every image that you use will more than likely fall into one of these categories, use the the Copyright questions and resources on this website to help determine what course of action to take to ensure that you have all the copyrights to use the image. As a teacher you must follow all the rules and regulations of each of the categories of copyrights. 

It is our job to ensure that the next generations are using citations properly to ensure that they are properly using outside sources. It is our responsibility to teach and show our students what a good citation looks like and how to do it correctly. We must also follow good citations in our teachings to ensure a good role model for the kids. Since determining if the outside content is copyrighted takes a good amount of time to do, we must make sure that our students do it properly and also make sure we are doing the same. We must know how to cite each different kind of source, and how to get copyright rights to each kind of source as well. Teachers can use this simple guideline to check what they are doing, and make sure they are using the proper ways to go about copyrights of different kinds. Many of our students will want to just pull outside stuff off the web from various websites, but we must make sure that they are looking for the copyrights. Many things on the web are for the public, but we should always try and push our students to check and get permission just in case. By checking each source for copyrights, is a good habit to get the students into at such an early age. 

Music and movies are such a big part of today's society. We are constantly listening to music and showing movies in classrooms today. It is hard to tell students, no, they cannot use what they find the internet to do a project or homework when it is so easy and accessible to them. But here lies a problem because kids can use parts of things, but then they end up losing the ability to be creative and wanting to be creative as well. Also the amount in which students use in downloads is also illegal on almost all purposes in which our students use these downloads. This becomes an even bigger issue that then teachers need to address in a way that should help the kids even get away from using them so much. More education about downloads and the issues with illegal content. By making kids more aware of the legal issues and copyright issues we could help students be more understanding of it all. 

Cool Tools for you #2

This is my Cool Tool for the week!

It is week two of looking at Cools Tools online for possible help teaching in classrooms.  This week I looked at the Tool called Storyboardthat, this tool is a comic building tool that you can create just about any scene with people, posters, writing and so much more. Within the Storyboardthat you can create your own comic story, you can view what other people have created as well. This website lets you go in and start creating a story, but once you are done it is super easy to go back in and edit if you ever want too.  Along with just these stories, there are groups you can join such as for teachers and for business, although these would be good to join (especially for future teachers) to join these groups they cost money to join.

This tool would be fun and good to use within a classroom. Storyboardthat would be a good creative way to keep kids interested in the subject by have a variety of ways to look at it. Because these are comics, there is not a lot of reading, they are simple and too the point.  To create a comic you would most definitely have to know your content in which you are teaching so that you can create a simple helpful way of showing kids what to do. In order to use this tool, you must have a clear idea of what you want to show the kids.  Because it is a comic you must be able to simply put some idea into a short and easy to follow way.

If the students started to look bored or overwhelmed with this a particular subject or lesson this would be a good way to show them that it can be simple but also could be a creative way to peck there interest in the subject or lesson. In a classroom you could also use this a good way to introduce a new topic, or a good attention getter at the begin of the class.

This is a very simple way to gets students involved as well. For any presentation project they might have, this could be an easy way to have them create and really show their understanding. This would really test students understanding of the matter if they were to create their own, because this would require them to really think about the material and then apply it to a scenario with dialog and also creativity. This is simple in the means of very straight forward, all the tools you need to create a comic is right there on top of the comic strip. There are so many different options to choose from so you are not just stuck with the same things all the time.

A little trouble may come from having time and patience. In order to create a good comic you need to have the time to put in the effort just to have a good story line and then also to play the all the piece of putting the actual story line together.  This story that I put together took me about 4-5 hours just to create a simple story. So that could potentially be a big challenge.

Make sure to check out Storyboardthat and start creating your own story board!

Citizenship on the Web

 Digital Citizenship is becoming more and more important in today's growing technological society.  Today we have to be careful of what we use, how we use it, and when we are using it.  Digital citizenship to me is about how we represent ourselves on any kind of social media.  In my personal and profession life, the way that I conduct myself is in a way that is in my mind safe for all to see.  The way that we conduct our everyday and every post on social media norms, that is what the major citizenship ways.  We should always take into consideration what is appropriate, even though some people may not think it is offense someone else may.  We have to be careful in all aspects of the digital  age of offending people, as we grow online we must look at more than one aspect of an issue before posting it somewhere.  For me if I want to post something that may be on a controversial issue I will be sure to have some kind of facts to back up my claim, like wise if I post something that I would even remotely consider inappropriate I will not post it.  For me no matter what kind of life we are looking at think about the overall idea about what you are posting before you do post it, remember that almost anyone can see it if they are looking for it.  Be smart about it, digital citizenship is a big thing that more and more people are becoming aware of. Digital citizenship is much more than we sometimes think it can be, this article talks about the digital citizenship and different aspects of it.

I have been hurt by something that was shared on the internet once.  It was almost shocking that someone that I knew and thought of as a personal friend would be so inconsiderate of people around them and post something that could offend people a lot bigger than me.  As part of digital citizenship, taking into consideration what others having feelings for is a big part that many people do not think of.  Being hurt and hurting someone via sharing something is sometimes easier than anticipated due to the fact that we sometimes share things without any real thought to what we are sharing.  Sometimes we use social media as an outlet for our anger and frustration because we do not want to make direct confrontation with the actual issues in our lives. I know I have tried to make a general frustration outlet on social media, and hurt someone by doing that.  Instead of just talking to them I made things worse by sharing my feelings with the general public, for all to see.  By avoiding direct action with that person I made things harder to explain. My actions were my own and if I could I would go back and just be up front with that person.  Digital citizenship also incorporates a big part of this, sharing mindlessly and hurtfully.

Adults I think are sometimes too apprehensive about the internet, and for the most part they have every right to be that way. Many things can happen on the internet that parents and adults have no control over.  It can be scary, but also with out risk there is no accomplishment. With adults trying to limit kids interaction on the internet is also limiting their knowledge and creativity they can be learning.  Using the internet is now a great source to learn to do just about anything, you can also share, post, talk about, read, or watch anything.  By having adults with fears and concerns it hurts the kids to be a big part of the participatory culture.  We live in a time where we interact with each other more over any digital device than any face to face connection.  We need to let kids adventure and seek the far reaches of the internet to be successful and creative in their own minds.  There can be many dangers on the internet, but if we let all our fears get in the way, then we are almost hurting our kids even more.  Digital citizenship is part of growing up now, and by preventing that is holding kids back from a more eventful and expressive future.

Cool tools for you! #1

In today's teaching environments we use the internet on our phones as apps or on a computer as programs or browsers.  There are so many different things we can do with each of these new resources.  For this week I choose to look at an audio tool called audioBoom, in this tool you can create an audio list or playlist with different kinds of things, you can share or save podcasts you have found, create podcasts of your own, listen to different stations/channels.  Each channel correlates to different topics of interest, there is a wide variety from news and business to technology and entertainment. This specific tool you can also create your own station by having a playlist of saved and even audios that you have created.  AudioBoom helps you to create your own recording and post it to the public. This is a free website, but if you pay you can upgrade different features to make things more public and recordings can be longer.

This tool could be easily used in a classroom to help provide a bigger explanation via someone else's perspective as well give students more open minded options for listening to someone else explain the material. As a teacher we could incorporate this into the classroom by having the students get onto your playlist every now and then to listen to you explain something on their own time. In certain classrooms you could even have the students create their own profile and have them create a tutorial of them explaining the course material.  It could be a good way to gauge the students comprehension of the lesson, as well as giving them a little more lean way to look for advice on what could help them to understand that lesson. TPACK is all about how to incorporate the different teaching methods with technology to help students in the classroom. Not only to help students but to help teachers know their content then help to translate that into teaching the students. For teachers you have to know your content in order to use the audioBoom, since  this is an audio recording you have to be able to talk about the particular subject, but also with finding other sources you must be able to make the connection between what they are talking about and then also the subject you are trying to teach.  As a teacher this is a good tool for teaching students since it will not be tool that will not take their full attention. It only incorporates listening, so you can also have them watch you do something on the board as they listen to the audio.

AudioBoom would be great to have your kids listen to a lecture outside of class if you did not cover something in class that you wanted too, or even use when you may not be in class that day.  For in high school you would get a substitute and it would be easy for a sub to pull your audioBoom up and have the kids listen to the lecture before having a worksheet. This would be an ideal situation for students and teachers to connect via none face to face interaction, or further explanations.  You could also even use it to draw student attention to subject matter by finding a news related audio.

 Here is how the record your own is set up. On the left is the first screen looks like and then the right is what it looks like after you have recorded something. Once you publish your recording you can then save and share it with any specific group or just the general public.

This is a good way to get your kids involved, it is so easy to set up and use. Once you have made a recording it is easy to share only with certain people, which makes it safe for use in the classroom. Using this app it would be easy for students to create their own voice, and profiles in here. They could share their thoughts and actually have their voices heard from using this app.  The navigation around the website is easy to use, very straight forward and simple. You could use this to challenge students to find another voice on the matter, or even to just find a podcast that talks about the same subject but maybe another side or different view.

This could be a fun and useful tool in the classroom if used to its full potential! Create your own profile and audioboom and explore all it has to offer you... Check it out: AudioBoom

To Pursue Any Creative Knowledge- TPACK The New Ways of Teaching.

TPACK- Technological, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge are the three main areas for a teacher to become a successful one in today's educational field. In today's way of education we have to become comfortable with incorporating new and improved technology!

Today we are constantly changing our techniques for teaching by adding in new technology and new tools to help aid our lessons and students. Adding new tools into the classroom are good for change and for trying to keep the classroom interesting. Before adding in a new tool you should ask yourself several questions about it: 1) Is this tool going to be easy to use/teach to the kids? 2) Is this a student or teacher based learning tool? 3) Are the techniques for using the tool similar to the ways that you are looking to teach the material? 4) Does this tool seem to have an effective teaching/learning assistance? 5) Can the tool help to assist all levels of students that are in the classroom?  These are just several things that you should consider and ask yourself about a new tool before implementing it into the classroom. All tools can make an impact in a classroom, not necessarily always in a good way, but by asking yourself these questions you can help to navigate the tools and to limit the negative impacts. Most tools now can be modified with certain settings to make them more manageable in a classroom, these is also another consideration to take into account when thinking of adding a new tool. There are so many new tools out there for teachers to use, but as teachers we also need to be smart about how we use these tools and how we can use them to get the most out of them.


Introducing new things into a classroom is always a fun experience for the kids as well as the teachers. When a teacher gets new tools and then shares them with the class there is always a glow of happiness in the teachers face. For teachers it gives hope to make the classroom a new and fun learning environment, by bringing in new tools it gives the teachers a new angle to regain interest from the students. After a while as a teacher you can see the students getting bored of doing the same things over and over again, they lose interest and then they lose focus. By adding new tools into the classroom it gives the students a new opportunity to find the material interesting as well as focusing on it. Though as a teacher, we need to be cautions of when we are adding these new tools that the students don't get to focused on the tool and lose focus on the actual subject. When adding the tool into the classroom you should choose a time that you may have some extra time so that the kids can play around with the tool with out getting overly distracted from what you actually trying to teach that day. You also should give yourself time to make sure that you can research what happens if there is a problem with the tool, this could lead to a big problem if you are not careful. There will always be challenges with adding new things into the classroom, but it is also a great way to keep helping the kids grow. In this article they are talk about how different tools have different impacts on kids in the schools.

In my classroom I am hoping that I will be able to make it enjoyable for all my students. Adding new tools into my classroom I am hoping will always be a fun and growing experience. Like we have discussed in the online chats technology is becoming a big part of the classroom, and now the best teachers follow the TPACK formation. In becoming a teacher today, we are fortunate to be able to learn about this stuff before actually going into the real world without it. For me personally, I would want to try my own way with certain things and then start off by using the tools that I am most comfortable with. When thinking about adding a new tool, I would first ask my fellow teachers what they have used or are using in their classrooms and see how they like using it. I would also go onto other teacher blogs and see if I could find any other suggestions. After finding several suggestions I would then do some research on these particular technological tools, too see if they would be at all helpful with my lesson. I would hope to narrow it down to 2-3 different tools, that I would then actually try to use myself. After self testing I would rank the tools in order of how effective I thought each of them were. I would then ask my fellow teachers to give my number one choice a try, if that passes the test I would use it in my class to help the students to enhance their learning and understanding of the lesson. I would even go to websites that have list of technology that teacher should have in their classrooms to get ideas,.. Click here to take a look at one website I might look at to gain some ideas of what to add.

TPACK is the present and future of teaching. Using these aspects will only help you grow as teacher and in turn will help your kids grow as students.

Open Minded and the Impacts

Capturing a spirit, well that can be taken in several different ways. But for the sake of this blog we are talking about the spirit of open, networked, and participatory communities in our leaning environments. We capture the spirit of these different things by having the ability to share and not be constantly criticized for it. We have the ability to share and gather information using the internet, books, and each other. We can use these sources to learn via videos, what people tweet, share on blogs, talk to each other, even what teachers send to other teachers that then share it with there students. As teachers we can capture the spirit of open, networked, and participatory communitites in our leaning environments, by doing what we do best, sharing with the world what we have thought of to see if could help someone else.

For teachers we tend to use the classroom as a place of sharing and experimentation. We can use the classroom as a place to try new ideas, adjust someone else's idea to see if it works better, and also to just test someones idea on a different set of kids. Open access in a classroom now would be having the ability to search the internet for information, More importantly, because the free access and how easy it is to access the web, it is becoming easier to have open access anywhere, anytime. For in a classroom we are now starting to expand how students can get in touch with it. We can also direct students in the classroom to interact with each other, right there is a good source of information. By self interaction we can learn a lot, what one person knows another person may not. We depend on the internet for open access but sometimes the best open access is right in front of us by means of another person. For teachers it is always a good idea to share our thoughts and ideas with others, like in this video they talk about how one idea can influence things all across the world.


Teaching has become an art of learning to constantly readjust with the advancements of technology in the world around us. I think that the future really is unpredictable in the ways of teaching as well as in technology.  Right now, we rely on technology in everyday life, we use it to find out anything we really want to know. We use it to communicate and to educate, even in the field of education we use technology everyday. We use it to share information, to save, learn, teach, and even to just use as entertainment. The future of education I think is going to depend on where the direction of technology goes. Right now we already get learning information from the web, and we can also teach via the web. I think this is not necessarily a good thing that we use the internet so much... Personal interaction is becoming less and less in my mind, the future is us with our heads down in some device. To be truly successful in education I think that education should be about that face to face interaction. The internet cannot help motivate you when you are down or stumped on a problem.  The internet isn't a teacher that can help guide you through some problem, it is good from helping to maybe find additional help though. Teaching and education should have a good balance between the open access of the internet and the face to face interaction in the classroom. The future of education is up to this new generation of teachers to keep a good balance between everything going on in the world of technology and the original way of teachings.

Textbooks... The most expensive, heaviest, boring thing you will ever have to buy or carry around. Now with any answer at the touch of a button text books are becoming less of a physical being and becoming more of an idea for the class. For me personally, I would much rather have a physical text book. For one it makes you search for the answer which forces me to read, I can touch it and don't need to be staring at a small screen for hours on end to read something, I can physically mark up the text, if I need to make a note or highlight something it is easily done. But for many students they hate their text books, for grade school kids it is a hassle to carry around this big book that just sits in their locker all year and maybe open it once or twice, and they can not write in it or anything. I think for grade schools purposes access to technology will have a big impact in order to help students from complaining about carrying around this big useless book. So in that sense I do think that textbooks are becoming obsolete. For college students, IT IS A HUGE WASTE OF MONEY (for the most part)!! I personally like to have certain textbooks for certain classes, especially ones for my main core classes. But in general we spend $200+ on textbooks per semester, why? We hardly use them, I don't open half of my books, yet we are REQUIRED to have them for the course for that ONE time we need it. I think that so many students are refusing to by traditional textbooks because so many are online and are much cheaper, so for the most part these books will slowly become more obsolete as well.

To share or not to share...

Sharing today has become such a big deal in every aspect of life. We share information sometimes with out even really thinking about it. With all the advancements we have made in the world we are constantly sharing things we have learned, what we have done, and little things about our lives with the world around us. To share is to be human now, we live in a world of technology that is all about how we connect and interact with each other.

As someone that has always looked up to my mom, who is a kind of educator, and then most of my grade school teachers, I always thought it was interesting to see how each teacher in the same subject matter taught and to see if they ever overlapped ideas/activities. My teachers in grade school always would talk about how in another class, previous to theirs how a certain teacher would have taught, and how they would share each others ideas for when they would be giving us study advice. As a student looking forward to becoming a teacher, I think that teachers within a small and close school have a good idea of how they share. By talking to each other  after school and constantly being able to shoot one another an email about something. I think that sharing via the web is important also, I am friends with some of my old teachers on Facebook and it really is a great way to see and share ideas about course work. Even though Facebook is a dead/dying social media it is a good place at least to start. But even then I think we should also stick to the face to face, and in class observations to learning and sharing with other teachers.In this article about why and how to share, it talks about how we can start branching out as educators to actually share among ourselves, Also, in the video with Dean Shareski, we see that just simply by sharing a simple idea from one school you can actually make a big impact in other districts/places. A simple idea can make a huge impact in other schools, this is a simple thing to do for educators. One of the best ways to share is a blog/twitter it gets information out there quickly and efficiently. A blog for a teacher can be helpful to others that are simply looking for new and different ideas.

Being part of a sports team and now going into my senior season I have become a leader on my team, it has become easy for me to get good ideas from googling ideas. I have joined several small online communities that are soccer related to see and share ideas that other people have about team bonding and idea's for how to make a team more connected. I even have resources around me such as the old seniors and even some of our coaches. I think that we should share via talking to each other and via the internet.

What I share is usually things that I either think are funny, informational, or something that I would like the world to acknowledge. For the most part I base what I share off of where I am sharing it.If I am on a more "mature" site/blog/media I will stick to informational or something that I feel that needs to be acknowledged. For instance I will only share my thoughts, ideas, plans for certain things on Instagram, a blog, or Facebook if it is something that needs recognition or is a good idea in a way of expressing how it could help another. I have several different twitter accounts for the idea of one is a more personal account that I sometimes use to tweet about "stupid" silly things, such as the other night I tweeted about oreos. But then I have another more "mature" account that I use just for the purpose of education and informational. I think for sharing if it is not offensive, rude, or derogatory towards someone it is okay to share. But that is also a tough situation for then people get to sharing things that could be taken that way. I stick to only sharing what I feel could be silly, an oreo tweet, informative, a blog about teens and technology, or could use acknowledgment, insta post about my little sister signing her NLI for college next year.
What not to share, that's a very fine line. We get mixed up in all these different aspects of life and how we should behave and then what we should share. Being an athlete you can get caught up in drama over maybe a lose and tweet something about the other team, or maybe just in everyday life drama you say something on a social media. We need to be careful of what we share, and how it can be taken. If you at all question whether you should share something or not, chances are you should not share it.

There are many aspects of what we do with students and how we help them. In a way with sharing what they have done can help them in the classroom to show the rest of the world what they have done and to show that the students are very much capable. But also in a slight way we can almost help those that make a mistake a way to correct it. The tools we have now to help students "off stage" can be very helpful but also if not use correctly they can be hurtful. I think we need to show kids what they do incorrectly with a comparison, and not show it to the world. Learning how to help a student more in a classroom is going to be very helpful compared to showing them what they did wrong with the world.

Sharing as I said earlier has become a way of life, as educators we live to share our thoughts, ideas, plans, and even our techniques. I think that we now sometimes get a little carried away with how we share things, which is not at all a bad thing but it isn't always the best way. Sharing I think can sometimes be more effective  face to face, as you can see emotions on what maybe is a struggle or really great. In person it is also easier to show and navigate things but also it is more of a personal sharing experience. Online has now become a quicker way to share but not necessarily the best way to share in my mind.

Sharing everything as a teacher is like sharing everything as a toddler. That's how you make connections and learn from each other. With sharing you can see what you teaching methods other people have in common with you and if maybe by adjusting your style a little may be more effective. As a teacher to share everything is to become part of something even more, it is to show that you are looking to become a better educator and it shows that you have an idea that you think someone else may be able to use or even make better.

As a teacher I think it would be great to not only get other teachers involved but also the community around us to help out and give advice on how we can maybe improve.The community based around the school can have a lot of input on how we can best educate our kids, by starting a community based blog/website that the local parents and teachers can give input on what we should adjust with in our teaching ways. By giving everyone else a little more say in the educational world we could really brig a community more together than before.

In this age technology and sharing has become a norm with everyday life, we must change and evolve with the society in order to keep teaching such a big and important part of the kids. Using what we share and learn based off sharing is a great way to keep improving the educational world around us. It helps to boost good writing by knowing that the world can see what you say means you should be more aware of how you are writing. I do not think that everything should be a formal kind of writing as to share is to share what you feel, it is a way of expression and saying you can only share in a formal way is to say you can only express yourself if you sound like someone you may not be. But to keep sharing is an important part of teaching and everyday life.

The cost of sharing is priceless but the outcome can be great. Never stop sharing and keep expressing what you have a passion for when it comes to what you are sharing with the world!