Deb Norton Tech

Animation Comes in Many Forms Using animation tools can help to add engagement, creativity and technological knowledge  for students   . Animations can also add excitement to your lessons. With plenty of applications for animation, the days of static imagery and boring presentations are long gone. Here are some of the possibilities. Create looping Gifs  ABCya Animate or Giphy can be used to make looping animations called gifs. Students could show a process, change over time or movement through a gif.  With ABCya Animate, students can create scenes that will play in a short animated video.  This site seems most appropriate for elementary and middle school students, however, when I showed this recently to some high school students, they enjoyed creating gifs and with the ability to add your own images this site becomes more attractive.  Giphy can be used to upload a series of images to turn into a gif or a paste in the url of a YouTube v...

Multimedia is of Interest to Teachers . . . I'm On It!

VR =Virtual Reality  This Innovative Technology is an Amazing Experience Perhaps you've heard of Google Cardboard or the VR View-Master ? Perhaps you tried out Google Glass or worn a virtual headset of some sort?  If not, chances are you will in the near future.  Check out this Chat with Deb to learn more about this innovative technology called virtual reality.  I wanted to try something new for this month's Chat with Deb, so I decided to use Powtoon .  Enjoy! Click on the image above to load the slideshow.

October is a time to focus on Digital Citizenship and Cyber Safety. In this Chat with Deb, you will learn how to use a video / animation site called Powtoon with your students for the purpose of creating a video about Cyber Safety. Here is the published Powtoon video : Here are some sites with resources on Cyber Safety: Netsmartz.org National Childrens Advocacy Center National Cyber Security Awareness Month Cyber Safety Checklist Internet Safety Checklist for students and parents How do you bring awareness to Cyber Safety with your students? Please share if you have a good resource or activity. Thank you to Intel's Teachers Engage for sponsoring this video.

Well, the Ripon Tech Academy sure was a great experience and I came away with so many new tools to implement this year in our classroom. Here are a few of the best take-aways. Naomi Harm is a phenomenal presenter.  She is a wealth of knowledge and I found her to be such a positive  inspirational  speaker.  I  truly  appreciated the fact that Naomi openly shared her digital tool box of resources with all of us to download and use in our profession.   If you don't currently follow Naomi on Twitter , you should start.  Course Director is my new choice for hosting online classes.  It is integrated with a Google account and I am quickly seeing all of the potential of this LMS.  Check out the online lesson I created for science.  I consider this a simple version of a course.  I can't wait to delve into Google Groups for discussions and give the grade book a try as well. Explain Everything might just be m...