Looking for ways to incorporate interactive media into your lesson, but are short on time? These three 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 incorporate Universal Design for Learning to differentiate your instruction. Try using one (or all!) of these tools as part of your next lesson!

Tackk (www.Canva.com): Canva is a tool loaded with enough easy-to-use features and functionality that anyone can create a variety of engaging content that gets shared. 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!  Join (FREE) to be able to save your creations. 

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. 

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/