The Power of Web Tools: Flipsnack

The Power of Web Tools: Flipsnack.

The Power of Web Tools: Flipsnack

Web tools allow opportunities for learning, collaboration, and sharing content. Flipsnack, www.flipsnack.com, is a Web tool that allows users to create and publish their own magazines online. The site has both free and premium versions. I discovered Flipsnack as an alternative to PowerPoint slide shows. Flipsnack is user-friendly. Create the magazine in Word or PowerPoint, save the best version; then save again as a PDF to upload into Flipsnack. I caution students to keep a Word or PowerPoint version saved for ease of making changes if they discover errors. Users may also discover they did not make errors, but they need to enlarge the font or change the font style to make the magazine easier to read online.

Flipsnack provides a perfect online magazine to show pictures from a birthday, vacation, or other event, along with personal captions. Teachers can create lessons using Flipsnack and deliver the link to students. Students can create their own magazines according to the teachers’ instructions. For example, in Advanced Comp, most of my students are nursing or education majors. When those students have written their annotated webiliographies over a specific topic related to their majors, the students then create an online magazine in Flipsnack to feature some of the material they have discovered in their research. The students must include a variety of items in the finished magazine: a dedication page, a specific number of reliable, credible sources, appropriate pictures/graphs, and other content of their choosing to enhance the project. Then students share the finished project with the rest of the class.

Students can create other projects using Flipsnack. Students reading literature can take a specific story, such as ZZ Packer’s “Brownies,” and create an explanation of the story complete with pictures to represent the characters and situations. The project allows students to demonstrate their knowledge of the story and interpret the story for others. A short poem would also lend itself to an explanation using Flipsnack. Students or teachers could take a subject such as climate change and research the topic, write explanations and find appropriate pictures to illustrate the topic.

For those interested in creating Flipsnack online magazines, I have found a few tips to be useful. Start by doing the research on a given topic. Then write the text that will appear in the magazine. Locate the appropriate pictures by using those from non-copyright sources and/or giving credit to those sources which allow free use of photographs. Create appropriate graphs if the material lends itself to that format. Create a storyboard so that nothing is left out. Save the finished project; then proofread! Save the proofread document as a PDF and look over the whole project again. When the content is loaded into Flipsnack, the font size should be large enough to read easily. Test to see how the finished project looks in Flipsnack and then delete any attempts that fall short. Be sure to include a cover page and an end page to make the project appealing at the beginning and to end the magazine appropriately.

Reenergizing

My blog has been dormant far too long.  I’ve made a commitment to myself to do a better job of blogging. My blogging buddy Larry Straining and I will keep each other motivated. Since I ask my students to write, what better way to teach than by example? I will become the coordinator of Tulsa Community College’s faculty development group this summer. The blog will allow me to share the group’s activities, but it will also allow me to reflect on new ideas and explore technology. Stay tuned!