Are you using a WordPress site to teach your class? Are you looking for a variety of ways to provide lessons to students? Consider using interactive content in your instruction. Using this type of content can add to the visual appeal of your site. This can also help you teach to the various learning styles of your students. One way you can add interactive content is through a plugin called H5P. H5P is a plugin for WordPress, Moodle and Drupal in which you can create content such as flashcards, quizzes, slideshows, interactive videos and more.

Enrich Images with Hotspots

One of the features of H5P is “image hotspots’. This is where you can superimpose interactive ‘hotspots’ onto an image to provide more information via text, other images or video. I used this as a tool to teach Iñupiaq language on a website created as a supplement to the Iñupiaq Grammar Textbook for the Beginning Inupiaq course (INU F193) taught by Ron Brower. I used an image of a parka and created hotspots around the different parts of the image to explain what each part is and what it is made out of, all in Iñupiaq language. The image and the hotspot provide visual cues to better facilitate language acquisition and provides examples for how to discuss the subject in the language.
This type of interactive content could be applied to many subjects. In an art class, this feature could be used with an image of a visual art piece to point out composition, symbolism, etc. In a history class, this might be used to annotate an image of a historical document or to identify important historical figures.
Begin using H5P with your WordPress site by installing the plugin onto your site. The “image hotspots’ feature (along with many other types of content) uses images so it may be helpful to find images with a Creative Commons License if you don’t already have a stock of images to choose from. Choose an image as your background image, and then decide what parts of the image need further information. This is where you can decide what you want your hotspots to be, whether it be explanatory text, an image, a video or a combination of these things.
By using interactive content, you add elements that not only add visual appeal but also allow students to more closely interact with your lessons. Consider using H5P as a teaching tool for your class.

Learn More

Inupiaq language UAF Community site: inupiatlanguage.community.uaf.edu
H5P tutorials, examples, downloads and more: h5p.org
Open-licensed stock media: ctl.uaf.edu/find-open-licensed-media
 

UAF Instructional Designers

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