Tech Tool

At first, I had no clue what I was going to do for this Tech Tool blog. Luckily for me my classroom looked like a jail cell and needed some decorations. While searching online for ideas and clipart I came across a lot of useful sites. One site was Teachers Pay Teachers http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/, which is an online marketplace where teachers buy and sell original downloadable educational materials, hard goods and used educational resources. When I found this site I thought that it was a great idea. You can search by grades, subject, price, and top resource type. The prices are reasonable; considering the time and effort that it took to make these resources, basically the price of a beer or coffee. I really like this site because it’s not your big corporation (down with “the man” hahahaha) trying to get rich, but individuals like you and me trying to make a little something extra for their hard work. However, I did not use this site, I just thought it was pretty cool and super useful. But you can use my tech tool to make and then post things on this site to make a little extra cash on the side.

My tech tool is probably the coolest thing ever. As I said before, I was searching online for ideas about decorating. Once I had an idea, I then had to find pictures or clipart to bring my idea to life. This is when I found http://www.clker.com/this is an online royalty free public domain clipart site. It’s a giant free clipart site, but what makes this site special is that you can edit other people’s clipart to meet your own needs; then the modified version now becomes a new free clipart piece for others to use as you did. The way it works is that you can edit the vector clipart is using the site’s paintbrush program; allowing you to make or add pretty much anything you want.

Here is a definition of vector clipart/graphics:

Vector graphics, such as clipart images, are formed by lots of individual objects. These objects, made up of lines, curves, and shapes, are placed on top of each other to create an image. Imagine many different pieces or parts of a clip layered to make one image.

So, my idea was to make a color wall using different color balloons as the color marker next to the word. Looking for balloon clipart is what led me to this site. I thought at first that it was just a free clipart site, but then when I clicked on the balloon, I found out that you could edit and change the clipart. I then adjusted and colored in the balloon, making a new clipart for each different color balloon I made. It saves the clipart in your account, so this site also acts as a database for all the work you create.

I found that little robot guy on this site too. You can make things like that using the paintbrush program, but that requires an artistic ability that I lack! 

The amount of unelicited (I searched if this was a word… found some places that said yes, so I went with it) L2 that is being used since I have decorated my classroom is mind blowing. They see them and just start randomly saying the colors. Also I’ve been able to use the color wall as a quick reference when I need to have them quickly understand what color crayon they need to get; as a result, it has helped in improving the efficiency of my classroom discourse. I can’t believe that it has taken me so long to decorate. My next project is to make a flower garden. I want to have different flowers showing different emotions like in my first MT. I’ve made a happy and sad flower but haven’t had time to finish the other ones. 

This tech tool does take some getting used to if you don’t have any experience with editing; but its not like Adobe Photoshop editing, more like using the Paintbrush program that has come standard on all PC’s for years. So, it is easy to understand after you play around with it, and the more you use it the faster and easier it will be.

Since the time I decorated till now, like a month, this site has just add an EXTREMELY COOL feature. Now when you upload any image larger than 1024x768, it will be automatically vectorized in your account. Basically this means that you can turn an authentic picture into vector clipart and then have the ability to move individual sections of the new clipart or make a frame version with no color. This would be great for making activities like color by number/letter/word/blend or cut and paste worksheets.