Where Was Joey When I Needed Him?

Last week we had to create an animation video about flipped classrooms.  Once again I felt like I was floating in space just hoping some space debris would come and rescue me, my best friend came instead. She helped me find a website that was easy to meet the requirement, since all the ones I found required a PhD to operate.  I have to remind my friends that a PhD simply means you know a ton of stuff about a small window of stuff. 

Unfortunately, my stuff doesn't include animations, even worse when I was a kid the only cartoon I cared much about was the Road Runner.  I was fascinated in that cartoon because I could go out to try and create some of the things the road runner did. Which also explains why I was expelled from kindergarten just a few weeks into the school year, but I digress.

I called my son Joey, he's created a comic app on iTunes, had a comic book published in Japan, has been asked to do a second one, creates the E-surance commercial graphics and even worked on a commercial that was played two years ago during the Super Bowl so I figured he could help.  The first thing he said was, "Mom, I am not going to do your homework, you never did any of ours." What good was giving birth to child that grows and happened to listen to the things you taught him as a child? I gave him birth, he should give me answers!  He gave me some good websites to look at and a few hints on how to make it easier when I finally did put words to my creation.

So I spent a bunch of hours, lost a ton of sleep and managed to create my animation.  I like the concept of a flipped classroom.  Today's students are so tech savvy and have no problems doing all their work on some sort of electronic device.  Why not have them review a glogster, YouTube video, or whatever it is a teacher used to prepare them for class the next day.  The point of school is to teach them how to apply what they are learning into their lives, become productive, informed citizens. 

The things I remember most from my school days are the things I was given an opportunity to apply what I had learned.  I took an "F" one time in 4th grade because I refused to do a sentence tree be, I saw no purpose in it.  I have poor writing skills because I hated the assignments.  I wish they had allowed us to do journals or create a play, anything would have been better than sentence structure.

In the 9th grade, our U.S. history teacher assigned us a project. We had to write a research paper about someone who was in the history books but it couldn't be Washington, Franklin, General Lee, none of the big names. I picked General Felix K. Zollicoffer, a Civil War hero from Tennessee.  It is one of the few assignments I still remember and smile every time I think about all the fun I had researching something I picked.  That's how I view a flipped classroom - a place where hands on activities are the teaching tools and the teacher is there to help guide and coach.  Sounds a lot like this class, even if I am too stubborn to ask for help, but if I did it would because she did in all the other classes I had with her.  And now I have created two animations.

See, “hands-on" works.