Teachers and students can now take advantage of a broader range of open education resources in Ideaphora using PDFs and images. Ideaphora continually rolls out new features and enhancements based on our product road map and feedback from our users. Our goal is to enable teachers and students to use any digital content as source material and multimedia resources for their knowledge maps to provide a more enriching, visual, flexible, and meaningful learning experience. However, to ensure the most accurate and appropriate keywords are generated for the best possible learning experience, we must address different types of resources in various stages to adapt our semantic analysis engines to how best to work with them. Watch out for more coming soon!
This week we've enabled our technologies to deconstruct uploaded PDFs into relevant concepts that are automatically presented as keywords for users to drag and drop into their knowledge maps. We've also provided a way for users to easily grab images from resources already provided in Ideaphora, including PDFs and Wikipedia articles, as well as by simply copying and pasting images from other online sources, into their maps.
Uploading PDFS
EBooks, research papers, reports and other text-based PDFs can be uploaded and used as sources for knowledge maps constructed in Ideaphora. Once uploaded, users can view the PDF and create their knowledge maps side-by-side in the Ideaphora online learning environment. Key concepts from the PDF are automatically generated in the keyword panel for teachers and students to select and drag over into their concept maps. Additionally, PDFs, YouTube videos, and Wikipedia pages can all be used as sources in the same map. Give it a try! This video provides a brief step-by-step tutorial.
Adding images
Teachers and students can add images from existing resources within Ideaphora or copying external images from the web or local sources and pasting into their maps. This gives users more flexibility in the images they choose to convey deeper meaning of the concepts they are studying and the connections among them, further enabling learners to make their thinking visible and to assess their understanding. Images are automatically extracted from resources in Ideaphora, including Wikipedia pages and PDFs, and presented in the Image tab in the Resource panel for easy drag-and-drop into users' concept maps. To learn the different ways to add images, watch this short video guide.
These are just a couple of our most recent updates to the Ideaphora knowledge mapping environment. To see more features and try the tool on your own or in your classroom, sign up for our free beta. Please share your feedback on what you enjoy the most about our tool and the ways we can continue to improve.
