While reading Suzie Vesper’s blog I learned about Magic Studio. Magic Studio is a free site for publishing Image Explorers and Timelines which can include text, images, video, and audio.

Image Explorers remind me of the note feature in Flickr. You click on any hotspot in the picture to have text, images, video, or audio displayed. Here are some examples:

The Parts of a Plant
Computer Systems
Explore! The Tower of London

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The Timeline builder caught my eye since that is something my daughter’s 4th grade class is currently working on. Here are a couple screenshots of a timeline available on the site.

• Women at Work

Readers can click on an event to display the accompanying content.

Code is provided to embed your publication in a website, blog, or wiki. It worked great using the widget button in Wikispaces. I haven’t been able to get it to work in Edublogs, even using the flash button. Obviously you can link to the publication as I’ve done in the examples above. On the webpage for each publication, there is a comment box available to logged in viewers.

You can choose to make your publication private or public.

Each creation can be licensed as Public Domain or Creative Commons. You can view, embed, and copy public items made by others. Tags are used for indexing. This tool has obviously been created for education purposes. It includes a Teacher Notes feature for identifying standards, prior knowledge, curriculum links, and more.

Content: You can access the public content uploaded by other users, or upload your own content.

• Image - JPG (not progressive JPG) or PNG up to 64mb - but preferably not over 4000 px wide
• Video - flv (flash video) only (up to 64mb)
• Audio - mp3 (up to 64mb)

Tutorials

• Here’s a short screencast on how to publish an Image Explorer.
• Here’s a short screencast on how to publish a Timeline.

Technorati Tags: Suzie_Vesper Magic_Studio timeline photos Creative_Commons

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