Thursday, June 9, 2011

Dragging Hidden Text in ActivInspire


I was creating a flipchart for Camp Inspire (July 19 & 20), and I was hiding words behind an image. The reason for this is to have students come to the board and pull out the words from behind the image. One of the things I was wondering about was how do I know where the words are behind an image? Maybe some of you have created a flipchart using this same technique and had the same question. Well, I am so glad you asked!

The first thing you would do is place the image on your flipchart. I happened to find an image of a treasure chest, so I put this on my background. Then I started typing my words; I decided to go with vocabulary words that would go with a treasure chest and a story of pirates. The treasure chest is located on the Middle Layer, and I locked it in place (so that students wouldn't accidentally move it and reveal the words). I moved all the words to behind the treasure chest. 

That is all well and good, but how do I know where the words are? When I move my mouse (or pen) over top of the treasure chest, I look for the mouse "tail" to change from a straight arrow to a cross-hair (looks like a cross with arrows on each end). Below is a video that shows you what I mean. (You may need to turn the sound up on your computer to hear).

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