Make Your Images Interactive: Thinglink

If you hover over the logo for my blog, you'll see some different colored dots pop up. If you click a dot, it will take you to the page for the subject that the dot is next to. This was done thanks to Thinglink. Thinglink is a web tool that makes your images interactive.

If your understanding of coding is limited like mine, you might not be able to map images correctly. This tool makes it very simple to make your images interactive with links. I made this example with the city map of my hometown, Las Cruces. It's very simple. I uploaded my picture, created dots where I wanted them, and connected links to those dots.



Thinglink has a free account option, and so far it's been everything I've needed.

On a more personal note, I had some issues getting Thinglink to work in my blog. It was a technical issue due to the way the coding in Blogger works. I used technical support, and within 24 hours had a very detailed answer. The technician went through the steps to recreate my issue, and then fix it. He then sent me the code to fix the issue. It was awesome. I highly recommend Thinglink, it's a great service.

PicMonkey: Awesome Image Collage Tool

I was reading through one of my favorite blogs, Free Technology for Teachers, this morning, and came across a post about an awesome new image collage website called PicMonkey. I used it to make the collage of Mayan culture pictures at the bottom of this post, and it took all of two minutes, including the time to go find the images. This is a great tool that I intend on utilizing to assist students in either presenting, or organizing photos for printing.

Prezi For Presentations: Goodbye PowerPoint!

PowerPoint has been around since I was a kid. I remember doing my first PowerPoint presentation when I was in 6th grade, way back in 1992. It wasn't a very user friendly experience, but it was definitely groundbreaking. Sadly, it's not as exciting anymore, or as the kids might say, it's "played out" (do kids still say that?)

Now my students use Prezi. I have signed up for an educator account, and my students build their Prezi's under my account name. It's a fantastic update to the PowerPoint model. As they build slides, they are given a linear view to the side, but they can manipulate the space that the slides are in, making them bigger, smaller, turning them at weird angles. As the slideshow progresses, it zooms and flips around. It can be a little unnerving if you have problems with fast moving things, but students just love it.

In my class, students use Prezi to make presentations based on books and characters in reading class, present research in social studies, and to present concepts in both math and science. It's a great tool, it's easy to teach, and the students love it. Try it out!

I've included a Prezi here for you to see. This one was made by my son this past year while he was in 4th grade. He did this without me showing him anything but the absolute basics: