Create Your Own Interactives!

Looking for ways to incorporate interactive media into your lesson, but are short on time? These 3 tools can have you creating an interactive resource for your students to explore in minutes. Providing your students with multiple representations of information, and multiple means of engaging with content can be great ways to differentiate your instruction. Try using one (or all!) of these tools as part of your next lesson!

Tackk (www.tackk.com): Create interactive digital ‘flyers’ with text, images, videos, links and more on any topic you desire. Creation is as simple as typing in your text and adding links. If you already have your content ready, you could create one of these in less than 10 minutes! You can create a Tackk without joining, but they expire after a few weeks. Join (FREE) to be able to save your creations. Here’s one we created using a blog post on teaching students to code: http://tackk.com/sqlcp1

ThingLink ( http://www.thinglink.com/) (FREE):  Create interactive photos in minutes. Embed links for more information on a topic (YouTube videos, Wikipedia pages, etc.). When your students hover over an icon in the photo they’ll see a pop up box with more info. This can be a great way to introduce a lesson or webquest and give students multiple links to explore for more information. Here’s a sample created by Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF): http://www.thinglink.com/scene/336184843761090561#tlsite

VoiceThread ( http://voicethread.com/) (FREE; paid subscriptions): Of the three tools, VoiceThread requires a bit more effort, but is well worth it in terms of the interactive resources you can create for your students. Free accounts are available, as are accounts for teachers, schools and districts allowing you to create student accounts without needing individual email addresses. Here are a few examples of how teachers have used VoiceThread:

• 7th Grade Edgar Allen Poe responses: http://voicethread.com/about/library/7th_Grade_from_Amy_Cobb_2/
• 7th Grade Exploring Probability: http://voicethread.com/about/library/7th_Grade__Exploring_Probability_from_Britt_Gow/
• 4th Grade Studying Plants in Collaboration with Pakistani Students http://voicethread.com/about/library/4th_graders_study_plants_in_collaboration_with_Pakistani_students/