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Navify for Multiple Means of Representation

Paul Hamilton — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:49:22 +0000

Multiple means of engagement and multiple means of representation are essential if there is any chance of connecting with all learners, or of meeting the diverse learning needs in any given classroom. With the rapid proliferation of digital resources, there is less excuse every day for educators who do not encourage learners to use resources and tools that work for them.

It is paramount that teachers recognize and remember that most of their students do not learn in the same ways that they themselves learn. Simply trying harder doesn’t work if you learn differently!

I’m especially pleased when I discover new resources that put multiple means of representation together in one place! Here’s one that gathers text, images, and videos into one place. Of course, you can add an audio version of the text as well, with one of many readily available text-to-speech options.

Navify is a service that combines Wikipedia articles with related videos from Youtube and online images. So, when a topic is entered into the search bar, it brings up the pertinent Wikipedia article along with videos and images on the same subject. With the multiple means of representation offered, there is a far greater chance of engaging a wider range of learners.

The first screen shot below shows the Wikipedia article that opens when ‘tiger’ is typed into the search box. You can see the tabs above the article for Images and Videos. The second screen shot shows what appears when the Images tab is clicked, and the third shows the videos.

It should be noted that it is up to users to select the images and videos that are associated with an article. For all of the search terms I entered, I was offered an extensive collection of images and videos to choose from. Since Navify is a relatively new service, there were relatively few videos associated with any of the topics I searched.

Two other features of Navify are also worth mentioning. The first is that users have the opportunity to comment on topics. Secondly, related topics are suggested with search results.

Tag Galaxy (Online Resource)

Paul Hamilton — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:33:08 +0000

Thanks to a Twitter tweet from Silvia Tolisano earlier today, I checked out a terrific resource that I hadn’t seen. It’s a remarkable search tool that’s been around for almost a year; and this illustrates two things. First, there is so much goodness online that it’s impossible to keep on top of it all. Secondly, it underscores the value of the sharing that happens on Twitter.

Tag Galaxy is an application where folksonomy, Flickr, and creative three-dimensional presentation come together in a way that is highly effective. The net result is an intuitive visual way to search for images on Flickr and to see the relationships between tags.

You enter a tag into a search box, and that tag becomes a “sun” that is orbited by a “galaxy” of related tags. The related tags are presented as planets orbiting the sun. If you wish to combine tags, you simply click on an orbiting tag and create a new sun with its own galaxy of related tags.

Once you have the desired tag, or combination of tags, you click on the planet you’ve created to view a globe of related images, as shown in the screenshot below for the tags Himalayas and Nepal. (This globe shows the first 235 of the 17,994 Flickr images tagged Himalayas and Nepal!) The globe can be tilted, rotated, and spun in any direction to find and select an image.

ARKive Education (Exceptional Online Resource)

Paul Hamilton — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 03:04:07 +0000

Visual learners require engaging images, but ALL learners benefit tremendously from engaging images and videos. With the high quality photos and videos that are readily available on the internet, these are the best of times for learners everywhere. The same holds true for educators intent on engaging learners. The resource I’m highlighting today is an exceptional example of what is available.

ARKive Education describes itself as “…a free multi-media resource for teachers and educators.” It is an extensive and well organized resource of extremely high quality. Lesson modules, organized by targeted age level from 5 to 16+, cover a wide range of topics in science and social studies.

Each lesson module consists of an interactive PowerPoint file that contains supporting photos and video footage. The modules download as zipped files which must be properly unzipped and saved to your computer in order to work properly. In fact, I found the modules I sampled to function very slowly the first time through. It was smooth sailing after that.

In addition to the lesson modules, Arkive Education offers a collection of engaging online games. Have a look at the attractive welcome screen. You’ll notice that there isn’t any advertising.

It is worth noting that Arkive Education is the “child” of ARKive, a website that houses literally thousands of wildlife images and videos, with a special focus on threatened species. Images have been carefully catalogued for easy searching. A great deal of additional information is also available about each species. All movie clips and images on the ARKive website are free to download and use for internal educational purposes.