Category: How To

Posted on

How To Fake a Hyperlink Text Pop-Over in iBooks Author

text-pop-over

recruiting rosie cover

I just published my latest iBook Recruiting Rosie: The Sales Pitch That Won a War. iTunes. It’s a multi-touch book that showcases how the American government created a massive media blitz to convince women to take up WWII production and service jobs. One point that I wanted to stress was that while there was great diversity in the women who did war work, the media campaign almost exclusively featured white women. Minority and lower-income women needed little encouragement to move to higher paying war jobs. In contrast, married middle class women who had traditionally avoided work outside the household needed to be coaxed into the workplace. They were the target of a sales pitch filled with themes of patriotism, sacrifice and duty that depicted war work and military service as fashionable and glamorous.

To illustrate this point I selected two photographs from Alfred Palmer’s famous series of color photographs depicting women war workers done for the US Office of War Information.
I offered the reader the chance to guess which became a promotional poster and a Pop-Over was perfect for that interaction. The Pop-Over widget is new in iBA 2 and provides a custom image that acts as a trigger to display a scrolling region similar to the Scrolling Sidebar. The Pop-Over may also contain text and graphics.

While I could have used an image to trigger the pop-over, I preferred a more minimal text anchor. Since you can’t anchor a Pop-Over to text, I made some text look like a hyperlink and then made the Pop-Over placeholder invisible and positioned it over the text. (You can download a free preview of the book to see this the results.)

Here’s how I did it.

1. Layout the page with all images and text. This image below shows a section of the page at that starting point.

Pop-over start

2. Select the text, open my Styles Drawer and use “Hyperlink” character style to make the selected text look like a hyperlink. 

hyperlink style

3. Now I have the same page with what appears to be a hyperlink.

text as hyperlink

3. Use the Widget builder to select the Pop-Over widget. While I could include text in the Pop-Over, I delete the text and drag my poster image in. Next I use the corner handles on both the image and Pop-Over to enlarge both to a corresponding size that I want for final display in the iBook. (the image below show it before I finished adjusting the sizes of the poster and Pop-Over).

pop-over-with image

4. Click on the image placeholder to make it active and open the Inspector. Go to the Metrics Inspector and deselect “Constrain Proportions.” That way I can make the anchor the size and shape I want to fit exactly over my text. (the image show it before deselection)

object constrain proportions

5. Go to the Wrap Inspector and de-select “Object causes image to wrap”  - that keeps the object from pushing text aside. That way I can place it over my text. (the image show it before deselection)

object wrap selector

6. Use the Graphic Inspector to change the opacity of the object to zero – that makes it invisible. (that’s the slider at the bottom of the selector) 

set opacity

7. Drag the invisible Pop-Over to cover over my anchor text. I resize it as needed. It doesn’t have to be exact. But when the user taps on the “hyperlink” text I want to be sure they are actually activating the invisible Pop-Over trigger.

arrange invisible pop-over

8. Last step is to preview the iBooks Author project on my iPad and make sure it works.

Posted on

PBL in Action: Students Write, Market and Publish

Where the Roses Smell the Best

Portland’s own Roosevelt High School will celebrate the culmination of a year of hard work from students and volunteers in the Writing and Publishing Center and its first publication with a month of readings throughout Portland. Student-led Unique Ink has published Where the Roses Smell the Best, a literary companion to Portland filled with short stories, vignettes, and poems about the places, people, and activities that make Portland unique.

The book includes work from Roosevelt students alongside local authors such as Brian Doyle, Kim Stafford, Steve Duin, Renee Mitchell and Paulann Petersen. Where the Roses Smell the Best is available for purchase at local bookstores and online at Powells.com and Annie Bloom’s Books.

  • The month of readings will kick off at Powell’s on Hawthorne on Thursday, July 11th at 7:30. Oregon State Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen and Renee Mitchell will be accompanied by featured authors reading their pieces from Where the Roses Smell the Best.
  • The Oregonian columnist and author Steve Duin will join authors and student writers at St. Johns Booksellers at 7:00 on Saturday, July 13th for the second reading.
  • On Wednesday, July 17th at 5:00 students, families, and community members will gather at Roosevelt High School for more readings and a celebration of Unique Ink’s first year.
  • The fourth reading, featuring poet Laura Winter and author Emma Oliver, will take place at 7:00 on Wednesday July 24th at Broadway Books.
  • The fifth and final reading, scheduled on Monday July 29th at 7:00 at Annie Bloom’s Books, will bring back Paulann Petersen as well as more student authors and author Sybilla Cook.

Unique Ink is a student-staffed publisher based out of Roosevelt High School’s Writing and Publishing Center that was established in 2012. It’s a great example of project-based learning in action. Volunteers at the center teach publishing to high school students to improve their skills in business, editing, and marketing. Through the center’s unique hands-on approach, students learn about the publishing industry by publishing and selling their own books. Proceeds from the sales of Where the Roses Smell the Best will help the Writing and Publishing Center stay self-sustaining and continue to be a valuable resource to the students at Roosevelt High School. 

Web Marketing team

Posted on

How to Teach Structured Academic Controversy

deliberation

I was recently introduced to Deliberating in a Democracy in the Americas (DDA), a valuable online resource for teachers interested in helping their students develop skills in discussing controversial topics. It uses the Structured Academic Controversy (SAC) model, developed by David and Roger Johnson of the University of Minnesota to provide structure and focus to classroom discussions. Not all issues can be easily debated as pro / con positions. SAC provides students with a framework for addressing complex issues in a productive manner that builds their skills in reading, analyzing, listening, and discussion. It shifts the goal from “winning” the argument to active listening to opposing viewpoints and distilling areas of agreement. It’s a prime skill for civic participation and in alignment with Common Core close reading skills

DDA-steps

The DDA site has all the material teachers will need to support discussion in 15 interesting deliberation questions including:

  • Should our democracy allow schools to punish students for off-campus cyberbullying?
  • In our democracy, should violent juvenile offenders be punished as adults?
  • Should all citizens in our democracy participate in one year of mandatory national service?
  • Should our democracy permit the cultivation of genetically modified foods?

The site includes well-documented background readings in English and Spanish with audio versions of each. And it provides links to additional online resources and a glossary of important terms for each question. It also includes a poll on the website where students can vote and see how other students have voted.

Link to a pdf that demonstrates how SAC aligns with Common Core Standards.
How to teach Structured Academic Controversy in the history classroom.

DDA details the SAC process as follows:

  1. Introduction. Teachers review the meaning of deliberation, the reasons for deliberating, and the rules for deliberation.
  2. Careful Reading of the Text. Students read the text individually, in small groups of 4 or as a whole class in order to reach a common understanding of the reading. If students do not understand the reading, the deliberation will not be successful. As a whole class or in their small groups, students agree on at least three interesting facts and/or ideas.
  3. Clarification. After checking for understanding of the terms and content, the teacher makes sure students understand the deliberation question.
  4. Presentation of Positions. Students work in small groups of 4 divided into pairs (A & B). Each pair is assigned a position. The position of the A’s is to find at least two compelling reasons to say YES to the deliberation question. The position of the B’s is to find at least two compelling reasons to say NO to the deliberation question. A’s teach B’s at least two reasons to say YES to the deliberation question. B’s teach A’s at least two reasons to say NO to the deliberation question. (Handout #2)
  5. Reversal of Positions. The pairs reverse positions. The B pair now adopts the position to say YES to the deliberation question; the A pair adopts the position to say NO to the deliberation question. The A’s & B’s should select the best reason they heard from the other pair and add at least one additional compelling reason from the reading to support their new position.
  6. Free Discussion. Students drop their assigned roles and deliberate the question in their small groups. Each student reaches a personal decision based on evidence and logic.
  7. Whole Class Debrief. The teacher leads the whole class in a discussion to gain a deeper understanding of the question, democracy, and deliberation. What were the most compelling reasons for each side? What were the areas of agreement? What questions do you still have? Where can you get more information? What is your position? (Poll the class on the deliberation question.) In what ways, if any, did your position change? Is there an alternative policy that might address the problem more effectively? What, if anything, might you or your class do to address this problem?
  8. Student Reflection. Students complete the reflection form either at the end of class or for homework.

Hat tip to Marilyn Cover at the Classroom Law Project for introducing me to DDA and SAC.

Image credit / flickr jaycross

Posted on

Use Haiku Deck to Build Academic Vocabulary

Haiku Deck visualize
Haiku Deck visualize

Haiku Deck is a great iPad app for building academic vocabulary – and its free. It provides a student-friendly tool for teaching common core vocabulary standards with motivation and creativity. Good defining skills are rooted in collaborative negotiation of meaning rather than memorizing glossaries and testing via two-column matching questions. The genius behind Haiku Deck is its simplicity – just type in text and use its built in search tools for related terms and images. With minimal design choices, student can focus on visualizing vocabulary and sharing their thinking with peers.

Haiku Deck add text
Haiku Deck add text

I’m not going to offer a Haiku Deck tutorial. It’s easy to learn, and has some thoughtful online help. Instead let’s look at the steps a student might use to visualize the term “freedom.”

  1. Create a new Haiku Deck.
  2. Type in the term or phrase.
  3. Tap the image icon and Haiku Deck displays a selection of high-quality and copyright-free images. Scroll down for more.
  4. Don’t like the images? The “similar tags” column offers related terms. Tap on one and the image selection updates.
  5. Select an image and the student is offered a chance to “add some additional text.” They could use that space to explain the association between the image and the term.
  6. Tap the + sign and create another slide following the same process.
Haiku deck search
Haiku deck search

I see so many options for using this app. Create decks of synonyms vs antonyms. Let students explore terms for a close reading, defend their choice of images, or contrast multiple meanings. Only have a few iPads? Let the students collaborate in a collective deck. Perhaps the first student picks the image and the next student curates the choice of image in the “additional text.” Have a term that doesn’t turn up any good image matches and you’ve created a chance to explore synonyms in the “similar tags.” Still can’t find relevant images for the term? Then you have a chance to speculate why the system isn’t turning up usable images. BTW – don’t worry about student using inappropriate words. Haiku Deck does a great job of screening those out.

There are lots of options for sharing student work. Completed Haiku decks can be saved to the web and viewed on any device. You can share decks via email or social networks. They can also be embedded in a blog or exported to PowerPoint or Keynote.

Common Core State Standards (CCSS) divide vocabulary among a variety of disciplines and grade levels. The standards focus on multiple meaning, context clues, figurative and connotative meanings and the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone. Haiku Deck could be used to support all of these goals.

Posted on

Common Core Training: Five Essentials

plainfield workshop

Teachers are too savvy to fall for an empty promise that something is “common-core-aligned.”

I just returned from a full-day workshop for middle school social studies teachers at Plainfield CCSD 202 (IL). It was entitled “Think Like a Historian: Literacy and the Common Core.” 

Teachers everywhere are concerned about the impact of Common Core. But they won’t benefit from lecture-style PD that itemizes specific strands and standards of Common Core. Promoting curricular “checklists” doesn’t build capacity, it fosters either resistance or mindless compliance. Don’t talk about “close reading” – do it!

As Charlotte Danielson has written: “I think the common core rests on a view of teaching as complex decision making, as opposed to something more routine or drill-based. … So I see the common core as a fertile and rich opportunity for really important professional learning by teachers, because — I don’t know now how to say this nicely — well, not all teachers have been prepared to teach in this way. I see that as one of the enormous challenges facing the common core rollout.

Teachers need a demonstration what Common Core teaching actually looks like, how the essential elements of Common Core connect to what they are already doing and why students will need to master these skills to be successful lifelong learners.

Here’s five PD essentials to support teachers in transitioning to close reading and the Common Core followed by specific comments from the Plainfield teacher evaluations.

1. Make it real. Teachers are too savvy to fall for an empty promise that something is “common-core-aligned.” And remember you lose credibility if you “paper over” Common Core’s controversies.

  • Thanks for the opportunity to freely express our opinions.
  • It’s great to be able to discuss the frustration and then move forward to what’s best for kids.
  • I appreciate that you never “dodged” a tough question.

2. Start from where teachers are. Reinforce their existing practice and offer a feasible framework for Common Core “make-overs” to their current lessons.

  • I now think it’s possible to successfully teach close reading. The responsibility is mine to teach how to do so.
  • I feel affirmed. It was nice to hear that how I run my classroom is right on track with today’s workshop.
  • My confidence has increased. I have a real chance of making these things work.
  • Loved the close reading using images. I’ve done this for years and never had a name for it.
  • I have a lot of these pieces already in place, but now I know how to more neatly tie them together.

3. Teachers don’t want abstract theory. They want ideas they can use in the classroom. Model the strategies, don’t just talk about them.

  • Each piece of information was attached to examples, how-tos, and evidence of its value. I was shown what works, why it works, and how to use it in my classroom.
  • It’s so helpful to participate in the activities just as our student should.
  • “Practice what you preach.” We were part of our learning just as we expect students to be.
  • Your presentation hits all learning styles.
  • I’m stealing a lot of these activities.

4. Common Core relies on relinquishing responsibility for learning to the student. Teachers have to be encouraged to “be less helpful” as they shift to student-centered, constructivist approaches.

  • I need to remember that when it comes to student responses – there doesn’t need to be a “right answer.”
  • A great reminder / inspiration to be student centered and remember that kids will need to be invested and own their learning.
  • Summarize and comparing – students need to share what’s actually important to them – powerful!
  • I will focus more on peer and student reflection and revision.
  • I like the idea of students evaluating their own progress and realize that it’s an easy thing to do if we make the effort.

5. The critical competencies of Common Core asks students to operate at higher levels thinking. They’ll need to analyze, evaluate, share and debate their ideas with others. Those activities should form the basis of the training.

  • I now understand more about Bloom’s Taxonomy than I did in college.
  • Getting students to think at higher levels is not as difficult as I thought it was.
  • I need to stop starting every lesson at the low end of Blooms. Want to start some at the top.