FINAL THOUGHTS

I truly enjoyed this aspect of the project. The 23 Things truly enhanced my learning experience in this class. I was able to apply so many of the 23 things to my personal and professional life. I made this a family affair with my children. There are many of the applications that they learned to use as well. Flickr was probably one of the best assets within the tools for me. Simply because so many applications are linked to the images I store there. I loved the application that made the simple little videos. More than likely I will not add to this blog...but I will begin a new one for my publishing company. When I become a teacher, I will again, create a blog for my students and parents. Finally...the end is near for this experience. (LOL) Yet, I will forever incorporate so many of the 23 things that I was exposed to into my daily life. Thank You!

THING NO. 23- Thoughts on Creative Commons and Copyrights

Thanks to creative commons the above link was where our 23 Things Journey was spun from. It was sited at the bottom of our blog by Dr. Wall. I truly enjoyed the experience. Concerning Creative Commons, I appreciate the effort that is trying to be made here. I believe in the impact that education can make on this issue. I realize that reality clearly is far from a society who respects the creator of any piece of work. I hope that in my classroom, I can do my small part by at least making students aware and educated on what is acceptable...and clearly what is not. I spoke in an earlier blog about the media summit I attended last week. My eyes were opened to how major market industry visionaries see the creator of music as a sole giver to the business. Meaning, they said basically "give your music away for free" because people are going to get it if they want it anyway. This side of the playing field encouraged more branding and merchandise sales than they did stressing with copyrights and protecting original works. Yes, I know what side of the industry these expert panels worked for, which are the artists. I really have no idea what some of these people would sing without the songwriter who makes their dream a profession. Comments like that may only make sense to people like me who fight to protect songwriters but, it simply makes zero sense to not hold value to the people who truly create. Today, most major artist are not writers. If you see their name as a songwriter on a song you can assume that a majority of the time the artist agreed to cut the song only if they would give him or her songwriting credit. Yes, this is how it works and if I am ever placed in that situation I do not know how I will handle it...hopefully calmly. Yet, when we get into copyrights and creative commons often sharing is caring for a while. In fact, hearing our music is a bonus in all directions. It is when other writers and artist steal ideas and music and re-write original works that a major line has been cross. I have ran into this issue once. I can not say the artist because I was not the publisher on the particular song that Kenneth Duncan wrote. Yet, the song ended up on a major artist's album the following year after a song was written and then knock-off written by consulting writers...basically they put their networking skills to the test and banked on it.

THING NO. 22 Thoughts on Livebinders

The three educational binders I made were educational technology, teaching math, and special education. I included my educational technology binder. What I did with this binder is incorporate all the things I found the most useful within 23 things. I now have a binder to keep these things forever organized. I can build upon and share my findings as much as I need to. In the classroom I can keep binders for each subject area. I can begin to build up material that is useful and works for me. Sharing is made easy and so does the process of placing links in each tab of the binder. In addition, the tabs make it even more organized by breaking down the sites into specific subtabs. I have to say this beats storing up papers and books and well, literal binders. These livebinders are a virtual tool to relieve the classroom of clutter. As a teacher, I think I will use this site to place all my materials I find useful.

THING NO.21 Thoughts on Animoto

This was absolutely my favorite "Thing" to do! My entire family enjoyed this. We have made all kinds of videos. I will probably purchase a package that allows us to use this for full length videos so we can get creative with our music...and make music videos. For this project, I took my instagram (OMG do I love love this app!) photos and uploaded them to the site as well as a song of ours written by Kenneth Duncan and Josh Dunne. I created a cute little clip from our launch party. I think it turned out rather fitting and useful! In addition, this was so simple. I downloaded the application to my phone as well. I was very impressed how I was able to load pictures from any outlet to include my photo albums in facebook. Last, please take a took at my video. I placed it at the top of my blog :)

THING NO. 20 Thoughts on YouTube

Currently, YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine behind Google! I have recently discovered the many uses of this site concerning marketing. In the past, I simply viewed it as a storage place for videos, to include music or any other type of video. Yet, it is more than that as we all know. It has produced fame and generates popularity among viewers...when incorporated into social communities another factor plays part. Viewers who share their favorite videos on facebook and/or twitter for example create potential for videos to go viral.

YouTube videos are great teaching tools. Yet, having students engage in search techniques may not be a good idea. I find YouTube as the best asset on the web for tutorials and things of that nature. I think YouTube will be a large part of my classroom!

THE CHOICE - OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO [Billy Gilman and 18 Top Country Artists]

This song was written and produced by Mr. Philip Douglas. He is a co-writer on a large portion of the songs we own at AGSMP. His success on this project is an all around blessing. It is very purposeful. I encourage you to watch the video and download the song from iTunes. 1 download = 1 pair of shoes for children and individuals in need all over the world.

THING NO. 19 Thoughts on other Social Networks

I know you guys get tired of hearing my music stuff, but it is so much of what I have been doing lately... besides these classes for my graduate program. :) So, yes, I try to make my presence known in all Social Networks available. These communities are the heart of the music industry today. It has vastly evolved even from the day of cd sales. iTunes and YouTube's true impact on the revenue on cd sales is obviously a sore subject in the industry...or is it? Well, it is according to which side of the fence your on...and trust me it is the songwriters and publishers affected the most in the modern music world. If you can not keep up in all social medias, you are way behind in the game. I encourage everyone to add music artist to your page. Becoming their friend will keep you exposed to the latest trend of social media...there life depends on these communities to build fan bases and help brand their name.

I "make" myself use other communities outside of facebook. In fact, I am so grateful for the applications that link all of my communities together. When I update, they all are updated all at once. I feel like home is with facebook. There is simply so much it has to offers that I see no point in reinventing the wheel.