Creating hot links to online interactive games

This hint is a useful shortcut to direct users to a specific interactive game by clicking on its image on a Notebook file thus there is no need to remember or type the web address and worry if the browser’s favourites still display the web link. This approach has the added advantage of keeping the focus on the task in hand rather than going to a site’s menu page and having some of the class choose the ‘wrong’ game.

Method

Visit one of the following recommended websites to select an appropriate online interactive game for your class.

Ambleside

Count On

Crick Activities

Planet Arkive

• Choose an image which represents your choice of interactive game (most sites have small images known as thumbnails) and use one of the following three methods to capture this image into Notebook:

• Use Notebook's screen capture camera tool or

• Move the mouse over the image, right click on the mouse then choose to copy the picture and finally return to the Notebook file and paste the image or

• As per 2 but when you right click choose save picture as option and then save to a folder from which you could recall the image at any time in the future.

Next, we have to link the screen shot (image), back to the actual interactive game.

1. Return to the website and copy the web address of the specific interactive game.
2. In Notebook, click on the screen shot and choose the Object – Link option to Link to this web page.
3. Now add a text box to provide instructions to pupils and save the Notebook file
4. When the class open the Notebook file they can go immediately to the interactive game by clicking on its image thus there is no need to remember or type the web address and worry if the browser’s favourites still display the web link.
5. The Notebook file could have supplementary pages, which set out puzzles based on those included in the interactive game to help assess the pupils’ understanding of the concepts, covered.