Last week I was planning for a training session with staff to look at making more interactive and engaging Canvas pages. One suggestion I gave was using Canvas as part of a Treasure Hunt (see - Scavenger Hunts in Canvas - My Light Bulb Moment! - Instructure Community - 601989 for more details). So, Rule 1 of CPD, if you mention something, you should pretty much have an example to back it up!
When I create treasure Hunts with students, I try to include some puzzles that are not all subject specific. A particular favourite is the find the link in the 'snowstorm', where I make a text link, change the text colour to white and hide it somewhere on the page. It can be found by hit or miss but the best way is to highlight the whole page eg: (see bottom right!)
Having nailed my 'alleged' creative colours to the mast, I wanted to start the quiz by making an engaging Welcome page designed in Canvas. I went to Canva to look for inspiration. Canva is free for teachers and what's more, you get access to the premium version - amazing!
Anyway, I found this:
It looked brilliant, and short of time, I thought I could get away with using the template, changing some of it and then importing it into a blank page and then adding an invisible button below:
To be honest, I didn't do much to change it!
I went over to the Share section to download the image as a png. I thought I'd have a look at the interesting See all options, just to see what was about:
When WHAMMO
There on the next page was......
Clicking on it gave me the option to Live embed via DIV (so much better than iframe):
Instead of a static link, I now have one that I can update, improve, change and all users have to do is refresh the page.
So that got me thinking that if the poster was a web feature, then maybe I could add (invisible) hotspots to it instead of my snowstorm link.
Sure enough, using the Elements feature, I could create an unfilled circle over part of my poster (in this case the compass):
I could then go to Position > Layers and my invisible frame was handily highlighted in blue:
I could then drag it all the way to the top so the image frame sat on top of the poster. Clicking on the dots at the end revealed a drop down menu where I could add a Link to the frame!
It was then a simple matter of copying and pasting the link to the 1st Clue page in Canvas.
I now had an invisible hotspot that acted as the Start button for my quiz:
And of course, being an embedded file, I could move this around at any stage, so if my Treasure Hunt meant they had to go back to this place, I could alter the original position.
I do like HotSpots and I can think of lots of times I would want to use them in work such as identifying links to other locations on a map or mindmap or even a printscreen of a Canvas feature I am explaining.
Anyway, embedding with Canva has now opened up a HUGE RANGE of options and not simply static images.
If I can do this, then why not have students embed resources on Canvas pages (as they get a free account too).
If anyone is doing anything similar or probably better! Please add some comments below..
