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Hi there. Joseph Kern, Instructional Designer here at Emporia State University.
Wouldnít it be awesome if your students could go look at your Blackboard page, and they
see a picture, and theyíre like, ìAlright, thatís kind of cool.î
But when they hover above it they see some pretty interesting stuff, like a quote from
somebody, thatís tied to the picture.
Oh, hey, that looks interestingÖ
That seems pretty cool and interactive. Theyíve got websites they can visit pretty easily,
based off of the picture.
Theyíve got a chat discussion they can join on this link.
And over hereís youíve got videos that actually pop inside your picture on Blackboard.
Thatís pretty cool. And itís REALLY really easy to do.
So, you can make your interactive image at thinglink.com, because itís a bunch of things
linked to a picture.
If you donít want to make your own, they have a lot on here that you can do a search.
Itís really a lot like Pinterest, as far as the format goes.
One thing I saw on here is a map, so you could have this as a really cool thing to do for
geography, or some other kind of class that would involve maps. You can put things wherever
you want them to live on it.
I saw another cool one that, this is, I think, one from a middle school, which is pretty
cool because it allows people to look at the inside of your school without actually going
in.
You can kind of show them a path of your wonderful dream for your school, or whatever you want
to do.
Thereís a lot that you can do with it, as far as any type of interactivity goes.
But to start on your own, you can Join Now, if you havenít already. You can fill out
the information thereÖ make an account.
Otherwise you can just log in. Now when you log in, you just click Create, and itís really
simple.
Just pick an image. We are going to go with Beard Hat.
It uploads it. And when itís loaded it pops up this page.
We make our image interactive by adding tags. So we just click anywhere on it. We pick our
icon, and we can link to something.
So letís say people want to know the instructions for making this, so I go to this website.
I can copy.
Paste, say, ìHow to make this.î
Click somewhere else. Letís say people want to be able to find more ideas.
We paste this, say, ìMore ideas.î
Click somewhere else. For the academics out there, we want them to learn a little bit
about the history of crochet, so we copy this link to a history of crochet, pick our iconÖ
save.
For the hipsters out there who want to stay up to date on the latest and greatest in crochet,
they might want to follow it on Twitter.
So anybody who tweets something about crochet and puts - #crochet - (What up?!) is able
to be found really easily through our interactive image.
So youíll search ì#crochet.î You copy that link, and we can pick a Twitter icon.
For the real beginners, they might want a more in-depth tutorial, so we can find a YouTube
video on crochet for beginners.
Copy that link. And letís pick a play icon.
And finally when youíre doing this, you might want some exciting crochet music.
The site soundcloud.comÖ I just searched ìcrochet,î and actually got some results.
With this, you want to make sure you listen to the whole song, because earlier I look
at this one and thought, ìMan, thatís a really good song, because this guy sings about
his grandma crocheting for some kids, and itís wonderful.î
Except right around here, thereís a semi-dirty word, so you want to make sure you preview
the WHOLE song before you have students listen to it.
So weíll go with this one. We can click Share. We copy this link, and we can have some crochet
music now. With a festive hat.
So these options hereÖ If, for your class, you want your students to be able to access
this, but you donít really need the public to be able to look at your image and interact
with it, then you can click to make it unlisted.
Only the people who youíve given the link to, or who someone else has given the link
to is able to access it.
This is what you could put on your Blackboard page, if thatís what you want.
If you want anybody to look at it, thatís fine.
Another option is to allow anyone to edit it, and I think this is a really cool idea
for almost like a discussion board, basically, where you have students posting their own
sets of information to it.
So itís kind of, maybe, something you want to try.
Put a title in hereÖ ìBeard Hatî
And save.
So now, what do you do with this? The link is up here, so you can copy this.
Or off to the side, you can go back in and edit it if you need to. This is kind of to
add it to your favorites.
To share it, this is a link that also, you can just copy this and add it inside Blackboard,
or share these other ways.
And another option is to embed it, which I would recommend for Blackboard. You can just
copy this to the clipboard, and itís copying all of this code.
Now in Blackboard, you can add your item.
And this is where you can just copy the link if you want to do that, but since weíve copied
the embed code, we can just go here. This is the icon to hit.
And we paste. And you donít have to know what any of it means. You just tell it to
submit, and now, we have Beard Hat.
So an extremely easy, simple tool that can do a whole lot. I mean, thereís a lot of
potential to this.
If you use thisÖ you have one of these things you build, let me know. Tell me how you used
it. Show me the link. I can tell other people, ìHey, this person had a lot of success with
it.î
That will help everybody out. Give it a try.
thinglink.com
And let me know how it turns out.