00:06
David Cole
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Aili Olichney from Genially. She’s here to talk to us a little bit about this Immersive Gamification style of lessons, of schooling, of just everything. And I thought we’d get started here by saying hello and getting to know her a little bit better.

01:56
Aili
Hey, everyone. So excited to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.

02:00
David Cole
Definitely. So, for those who are not familiar with you and your work at all, can you tell us a little bit about your background, how you got started?

02:11
Aili
I have an interesting sort of atypical background for getting into this kind of work. I taught English as a foreign language in southern Spain in pretty different capacities. For about five years, I was in the classroom and out of the classroom working with different age groups, and I got a message from the CEO of Genially, which was very small at the time. I think there were, like, 14 other people to get on board. And so I started working for Genially part time. I was translating, and as the company’s grown, it’s grown a lot, especially in the last I don’t like naming the pandemic and everything, but pandemic forward, it’s grown a lot. And I’ve been able to sort of inch my way into this job as a community builder. And it’s perfect.

02:58
David Cole
You’ve had your hand in building lessons and moving up in that route. Have you always been a creative person?

03:09
Aili
So I like this question. I feel like it’s almost like a trick question. Yes. I’m glad you’ve asked. I think it’s really easy for me to say yes because I got a lot of positive feedback around being a creative kid growing up. And I think you have kids, right? Like, all kids are so creative. And so I think that at some point, some of us learn that maybe we’re not as creative or we’re more creative. And I live with a ten year old, so I’ve seen this process happen. He’s decided he’s not creative, so I am creative, but I think everyone’s creative, and hopefully we can all connect to that part of ourselves. I think it brings a lot of joy and freedom.

03:47
David Cole
My ten year old is the same way. Sometimes he is creative, make this cool game, but then sometimes when you put him on the screen no, I’m not.

03:56
Aili
Yeah. And it’s like we think that being creative means that we’re good at art or something. Like, you’re technically good at singing or a lot of kids think they have to be like, a good dancer or a good singer. And it’s really just about letting yourself not be so censored.

04:12
David Cole
I think it really is. I feel like I’m a free spirit. I can do most things and not get too embarrassed about it anymore.

04:19
Aili
Cool.

04:21
David Cole
Yeah.

04:22
Aili
That’s something I’m working on, not getting too embarrassed.

04:26
David Cole
Yes. I’ll put myself out there and this is what happens. That kind of thing. People don’t like it, that’s fine. But usually what I’ve found in being in the creative side of things is that out there, you express more, you’re able to develop more, and some people will be drawn to that. Usually people aren’t put off by it as much, so you might be put off by it if you’re embarrassed for yourself.

04:55
Aili
No, I’m not put off by it. I admire it. I’m working on it. I think that showing up is the way to go.

05:05
David Cole
Cool. So for our viewers who are not at all familiar with Genially right now, can you give us a rundown of what it is and how you see online educators using it the most?

05:21
Aili
Okay. Yeah. So Genially in a nutshell, is a tool for creating interactive and animated learning materials. And the scope of what online educators and in classroom will add, but online educators can do with it is pretty wide. I know you use it yourself, David, so, you know, but we have everything from centering student choice, so with choice boards, playlists, to gamified materials, which I hope we get a chance to talk about later, and then the ability to create better, more engaging versions of what most online teachers are already creating. So, presentations, infographics, interactive images, guides, and even full courses. Some people will use Genially to create their courses within the tool itself only, and other people will integrate Genially creations into other tools for course creation.

06:09
David Cole
Yeah, and those of you watching this, watch all the days, because there is another presenter who does talk completely about how to create an entire course within it. So the students will go through a hallway, they click on a door and it opens up the course, and they can go back out of that door for the next day that they have class go into another room. It’s so cool how in depth and how big you can make these.

06:35
Aili
I would love to see that. And it sounds like a good example of sort of our immersive learning options too, whether that’s through sort of a breakout escape room type thing or just putting students in C two. So cool.

06:49
David Cole
Yeah, it’s really cool. I’ll share it with you. It’s going to be shared on her page as well, on this now, myself included, a lot of our viewers started being a presenter using like PowerPoint, that kind of thing.

07:09
Aili
Yeah.

07:11
David Cole
Gina Lee now offers a way for people to convert those old lessons into this interactive format. Can you tell us about how that is, how easy it is to use?

07:26
Aili
Yeah, absolutely. So you can upload your PowerPoint directly into Genially. It does require this is a small caveat. It does require at least the lowest kind of premium plan. So I think our pro plan is about $8 a month. And the process for that is once teachers have uploaded their PowerPoint, you click on Upload your PowerPoint, you choose it from your device, it goes into Genially. And then they can add interactivity and animation to all elements, whether that’s text, images, they can add buttons and pop up windows. They can create things that are a lot more interesting. They can embed external elements. So Google Maps, forms, videos like Quizlet, Flashcards, anything with an embed code. The sky’s sort of the limit. But that’s how they’d start.

08:08
David Cole
Yeah, that’s and I find that’s a good way for people who are just getting nerd mentally to start either that or templates. Because you already created some of your own stuff and you can kind of play around with the tools by modifying things. Then I usually recommend people go towards the template afterwards.

08:26
Aili
I do the same thing. I think a lot of people think that we should always start our teachers with the templates, which some do prefer, because I think mentally it feels less intimidating sometimes. But I’m a big advocate for starting with a from scratch creation, whether that’s a simple image and then building from there. And this would be a good way to do that too, right? To bring in your PowerPoint and just add a few buttons and tinker around that way?

08:50
David Cole
Definitely. So then that kind of brings me to your favorite type of presentation. What kind of presentation do you like?

09:03
Aili
Oh, my God.

09:03
David Cole
Or like creating? Creating?

09:05
Aili
Do I like creating?

09:07
David Cole
Yes.

09:10
Aili
Favorite presentation types to create. I can think of like, favorite templates right off the bat. That kind of got me really inspired. I know we have one called an elevator pitch template. So that has you going through elevator doors when you’re starting out. But I guess when I sit down to make a presentation, what I’m thinking about is the journey that I’m taking my when I was teaching my students on right so I was looking at like we’re going to have some kind of overview. Sometimes I would bring in some flashcards right away, then I would embed like Quizlet flashcards back in the day and I’d have students start that way and then maybe we’d go into a history lesson where they could play around and move. There’s a lot of draggable elements available in Genially you can also draw on the slides. So I’d have students sort of move around different historical events, watch videos on them that would be in sort of the second portion and then I would have a wrap up like review section at the end.

10:03
Aili
I don’t know if this is where you were going with the question but that’s sort of how I build my presentations.

10:08
David Cole
Yeah, that’s an interesting way to do it. I try to have a format as well. Your intro, your meat and potatoes saying that you wrap up kind of like the I do, we do, they do type situation perfect.

10:23
Aili
Yeah. And have you found any tricks for that when you’re finding things you like to do?

10:31
David Cole
I try to stick with the same template now. Now that I’m doing it over and over again, I’ll change this color scheme up if I need to and I’ll add in other features. So I like to hide some slides so that when I finish my lesson, I’ll just duplicate that lesson and I’ll just replace pictures and replace wording might bring one of those hidden slides back into it and hide it to something else. That way I can keep the same template going and use it over and over again to keep that consistency going into the student.

11:05
Aili
That’s great. I think that’s good. Both on just a practical learning level, you know that students are going to be hitting these same points or the same structure every time and they get familiar with that. And then even from a personal branding perspective for educators who are looking to become better known, whether it’s on your platform or on social media, I think it’s helpful for them to have their sort of branded template this is who I am, this is what my lessons look like. And pull from there and then it saves time.

11:31
David Cole
I just recently started messing around with the interactive images as well that you can do with Genially, my favorite, which is really cool. It’s so cool. Especially for marketing and advertising yourself or your lessons.

11:46
Aili
Oh really?

11:47
David Cole
Yeah, you put the interactivity pieces in there. You can link to a preview lesson that you might have created. You can do your bio, you can say these are like maybe you have twelve units or ten units. You can say these are the units and this is the summary. They can click on it to reveal summaries. It’s so cool. And then you can even have a link to your sign up page if you’re on outschool all school, you can have people log right into your sign up page and things like that. So it’s really nifty perfect.

12:17
Aili
Yeah, I would love to see that. Also, I’m always looking for examples of what different teachers, educators, entrepreneurs are making. So please do send that over if you can.

12:27
David Cole
Definitely. So, hands down, my favorite part of Genially is the template gallery. There are so many different things there’s the ability to find, modify, use so many different creative designs. How are those templates changed or added to? Are there any limitations on using templates or anything for people?

12:53
Aili
Yeah. So we have a small I like to say we have a small but mighty team of designers growing all the time, but still small, especially for how many. We have thousands of templates up, and I don’t know how they’ve done it, but they add new templates, like completely brand new templates, every two weeks, and then they’re constantly revising older templates to make them better, basically to make them easier to use, and then sort of updating their designs a little bit to keep them relevant. That’s what we have on the like, how often are they created, reviewed, revised? It’s also nice sometimes we get feedback about templates that people want created or revised so that comes in and also gets filtered through their process. And in terms of limitations, how do I want to say this? So I think on the one hand, Genially’s free version is really extensive.

13:38
Aili
It’s one of the reasons I’m work for Genially. It has one of the most extensive free versions I’ve seen among sort of other creation tools. And that means there’s no limit to the number of learning materials that a teacher can make with Genially for free. There’s also no limit to how complex a creation can be, how long it is, how many layers it has, how many interactive elements there are. So you can really create almost anything for free. And that said, one of the main reasons that teachers will upgrade, if they can, to sort of the basic Premium plan is to get access to all of our templates. So there are free templates and there are premium templates, and you can work absolutely just from scratch and off of free templates, but teachers who are looking for access to all of those will want to upgrade for that.

14:20
Aili
So that’s a limitation.

14:24
David Cole
I love the monthly newsletter because it always gives out a new template or a couple of new template designs and lets people know what’s coming, what’s new out there. So I definitely recommend people sign up for the newsletter just so they can get the access and seeing what’s new. Because Daunting looking through all of the templates that are on there.

14:47
Aili
Yeah, and I think if you don’t know what’s new, they tend to be filtered up towards the top. But if you haven’t been in for a while and you’re getting back into it, I think they’re a fun way to keep up to date on what’s out there.

15:01
David Cole
Now, personally, as a teacher and a creator, I’ve already got Google Slides, PowerPoint, canva you got Prezi? I mean, there’s so many different things that people can do, and I’ve even dabbled with making Adobe type lessons. But then when I realized that all these tools always seem to lack some things or really require me to do some kind of work around them to make them do what I wanted clickable Elements or the drag and drop or drawing on the slides directly. There’s so many cool animations I like to add. I love animations. But when I discovered Genially, I found that all of these facts are built in to make it easy to use. What would you say is your favorite fact or feature that Genially has?

15:56
Aili
My favorite creation type, my favorite feature. Overall, I’m a big fan of our breakout rooms, so breakout virtual escape rooms. It’s a gamified option. We have quite a few pretty intricate, impressive templates. Some are simpler than others, of course, and I like creating them, even from scratch. I think it’s one of the most fun things you can make in Genially. And then I guess I’d highlight. A new feature that came out recently was Interactive Questions. I think that’s out of beta testing now, but either way it can be live, so hopefully not top secret. Here we are. But Interactive Questions is a newer feature and that allows teachers to ask an open ended question or multiple choice question within their Genially pretty easily. So that’s kind of fun. I would check that out if you.

16:45
David Cole
Haven’T yet fun looking, I would have to check that one out. I have not seen that one or used that one yet. I was really excited when the Click to Reveal section came out, but then even more so in the last couple of weeks when I noticed that you can now click to hide. Also that little feature on there. Notice it? You can click a little toggle we’ll hide it.

17:16
Aili
Yes, it’s great.

17:18
David Cole
I don’t think that wasn’t there, I don’t think when they first came out with the Reveal. So I was really excited when that one came out.

17:25
Aili
Yeah, our product team is improving all the time and Reveal is something that we’ve been asked for a while. So it was really exciting to be able to give that to our community.

17:38
David Cole
Gamification side. Let’s kind of move into there because there’s so many different things. Escape rooms are amazing and so many teachers want to use escape room. I think they, more than anything, use all the features of Gmail because you can do basically everything. Ask your question to go here, be able to go there, unhide something to find a secret room, that kind of thing. It’s really cool what you can do with that. What are some of the other things that you can do with Genially? What are some other kinds of creations besides just like target style lessons.

18:16
Aili
Yeah, excellent question. Can I share my screen and show off a little piece of our teacher kit? Because that shows different creation types, and I think sometimes it’s better to see them than just hear about them, especially because this is a visual tool. Can you see my screen?

18:35
David Cole
Yes.

18:36
Aili
Okay, perfect. So this is what I show a lot of the teachers that I work with, and we’re talking now about gamification, but since you’ve asked about other things we can do, let’s look at our teach options. See, there we go. We have options to teach a subject like our standard presentations. I can also send this through if you want to share it with your community, David, of different examples and templates that can be used. Also, timelines are something that I really enjoy sharing with students in classes. I found a lot of teachers used to ask about creating timelines with Genially, and we have more templates than ever before. So I definitely recommend checking these out because they’re simple, they’re fast, they’re highly applicable for a lot of different contexts. You can make a timeline for history, but you can also make a timeline for science, for language.

19:29
Aili
There’s a lot you can do.

19:30
David Cole
I used it once to make a book review, to review what happened in the process of the book.

19:36
Aili
Perfect. Like I said, interactive images. I said my favorite. Why is it my favorite? Because it’s kind of like the biggest bang for your buck, right? You can make an interactive image in five minutes, ten minutes, and of course you can always add to it, but you can get some pretty incredible things in very little time when you’re working with an interactive image creation. I don’t know if you’re hearing my time. Also here we have our.

20:15
David Cole
You can read about.

20:16
Aili
This is a more complex looking version of an interactive image. And this is sort of the standard what we think of when we think of an interactive image, right? Which is an image with pins. And this is the first thing I usually like to show people how to create because it’s so fast and easy and it’s really easy to flip worksheets also, or presentations and turn them into interactive images. What else can we show you in terms of gamification? We talked about our breakout. Definitely show off a few of those, at least. This is one of my favorites. I don’t know if you’re getting my computer audio. I hope it’s not too loud.

20:54
David Cole
I’m not hearing the audio.

20:57
Aili
Oh, that’s actually probably better because I’m not trying full control over how you’re hearing it. So I’m hearing audio, but I didn’t set up my computer so that you would hear the audio. So you could imagine audio here. But here’s an example of the first stage of an escape room. This is a close the hatch activity. What is a relationship between electricity and magnetism called electromagnetism. And as we continue through, it would close the hatch to move to the next room of the escape room. So this would be a quick way to get in your quiz at the start or the end of a lesson, right?

21:31
David Cole
Yeah. I like that it closes the hatch a little bit by a little bit.

21:35
Aili
Yeah. I am a big fan of the designer who made that one too. And then board games. I talked to a lot of teachers who were using these interactive board games in their class. Somebody who used a broken link here I spoke to a teacher who used a board game template that’s similar to the Game of Life and they were teaching students about health. You could also embed I’m showing you these little windows. So here’s where I would embed different challenges, questions that students would need to ask to advance. They can roll their die here. So these are how these games work. These can be fun. Also for online group calls or if you’re using any kind of what are those called when you divide your zoom into smaller rooms? Are those breakout rooms?

22:26
David Cole
Breakout rooms. I like using those types as well for vocabulary review. Each level has a vocabulary word on it. They would roll the dice and they have to say the word or define the word. It’s really cool.

22:38
Aili
Perfect. We can also find quizzes that will be in give students practice in games. We have a lot of kind of random games. I would say all the games that you liked in your childhood. We have templates for some of them or that will feel similar to some of them. Here’s the Wheel of Fortune. You could use this for math. Again, this is essentially a way to get your quiz into a more interesting format for your students. And I’ll send this over so that people can go through it with more time. I don’t want to take up too much of our time going all the way through. Perfect. And we have extension activities. These are things like flashcard activities. They can also be used as warm ups, which can be nice. I don’t know if you’re using warm ups in your classes if you were, but I was big into our warm up.

23:34
David Cole
Warm ups are big and I like how they flip. So you can see both sides and see the answer side.

23:40
Aili
Exactly. And one of the things I like best about Genially is that you can also bring in a lot of the things you’re creating with other tools into your creation. So if I didn’t want to use these cards and I wanted to use my Quizlet deck or something somebody else has already created, I could also just embed that directly into my presentation. Then we have things for planning and scheduling. I’ve had teachers also use this for their newsletters. They’ll send out an image, they’ll link to the Genially and that’ll become like an interactive newsletter format. So I’ve seen that a lot, kind of under communication. This is one of the templates that’s used for that quite a bit.

24:17
David Cole
Because.

24:17
Aili
Of its little newspaper format. Yeah. So those are a few of the creation types that I like the best.

24:27
David Cole
Lots of different ways, it looks like, to use your Genially to make it you need for your type of education. A lot of the viewers are probably ESL teachers, and we’re branching out into other areas on the site as well. And so there’s so many different types of ways you can make it, whether you’re using the games to add to a classroom or whether you’re making a whole history lesson about a topic and then add declares in there as well. There’s some very comprehensive templates that you can get started with. Just make your own.

25:01
Aili
Perfect.

25:02
David Cole
I really like that. So that’s really interesting. So gamification is like the biggest thing out there right now. Can you kind of like the teachers who have never done gamification before, never spurt of it, but they’re a little daunted by it? Can you kind of tell us how you sign it, how you use it, how you see it use the most?

25:31
Aili
Yeah, absolutely. So in case anybody doesn’t know what gamification is, it’s essentially using elements from usually video games or even board games. But I think we mostly think of video games now and bringing those elements into our learning materials. So elements like points scored, collecting jewels, badges, prizes, teamwork competition rankings. It’s really trying to get into the mindset of what motivates. Like a gamer, right? Somebody’s on their Nintendo Play all day, for example, and getting students motivated with that same idea in their learning. And I’d say when you get started, I think the easiest way is to take a worksheet or a presentation or a quiz. I’d say a worksheet or a quiz, and I would turn it into a game, and I can show you how I would do that. Maybe if we demo in a bit. And then from there, once they’ve created sort of a basic game out of something, they can start flipping the way they work on these things.

26:41
Aili
I found that when I was first creating gamified activities, I was like, okay, I have a worksheet. How can this become a game? And now my way of thinking is a little bit more like, here’s the game I want, here’s what I think is motivating. Here’s the universe we can create for our students. And now how does this align with what I’m teaching in terms of content or in terms of language? But I would start with an easy flip so we can look at that.

27:09
David Cole
Yeah, because I think my first ones were with workbook. Go to the Dollar store or whatever. I found a workbook and I was like, Looks really cool, and turned it into a game of my lesson for my students, just converting what I see on there into something that I can use them because it’s kind of hard. Here’s my workbook. Let’s look at it together. Scanning a whole book. And so it’s difficult, but it makes it easier when you are able to put it in.

27:41
Aili
Yeah. In terms of games that are really successful off the bat, I would suggest, like, hidden elements are really great because then you’re just taking whatever you have in your worksheet and you’re hiding it in an image or something and having students find those questions, solving them to move on. That’s sort of like an escape game format. Also, board games work really well just because they’re easy to put together, they’re easy to follow, and you can work in teams. And David, I don’t know if there’s a certain kind of format that you found that works really well or certain kind of game that’s been more successful for you.

28:12
David Cole
Not that it’s been more successful. It depends on the situation because I’ve used a weird Waldo style game for teaching animals in a zoo and showing kids how to find the right animal. I’ve used, like I said, the Snakes and ladders type games to have fun going through vocabulary reviews or phonics reviews, using something similar type that it all depends on the student and that level. But yeah, I’ve never had a student say, no, I don’t want to play a game.

28:49
Aili
Yeah, well, and especially when you give them the alternative, right? It’s like, do you want to try it in a game or do you want to try it in a workbook? I have also never had a student.

28:57
David Cole
Choose a workbook again. Tic TAC Toe is another huge favorite, mine and some of my students.

29:05
Aili
Yeah, cool.

29:06
David Cole
Yeah. Now, I learned some of this stuff I’ve learned some of this stuff through the Genially Academy, which is really cool.

29:15
Aili
Yeah. I would love to send in the link for that.

29:18
David Cole
Yeah. Because there’s a lot of really cool things that people can figure out in there as well. And now there’s new things that you can do as a creator, like you and I talked about once before, which is so they can add more features into it, right? I think it’s called scape.

29:37
Aili
Yes. There’s scape extensions. There’s also sandbox extensions. Those are groups of I can talk more about Scape because I know more about them. It’s a group of French teachers. I don’t know what age group they are. I don’t know if they’re teachers or professors, but that know how to code. And they’ve created extensions for Genially to be able to do more like self correcting activities or drop down menus. I’ve used it for creating a panoramic shot that you can rotate through. So there’s some cool things you can do if you’re looking for sort of higher level stuff.

30:12
David Cole
Many more ways that you can expand on these lessons that’s really. Cool. Can you show us a little bit about the template gallery so people can see a little bit of what’s there?

30:23
Aili
Sure, yeah. Let’s head on your screen now. When I change my window, are you seeing the window? I’m seeing now?

30:32
David Cole
Create Genially.

30:33
Aili
I’m inside the panel. Right? Good. Okay, so we’re going to head into Create Genially. Thanks for being my eyes, because I can only see my screen now. And so as soon as you create an account, this is what you’re going to see. You would click that button. Create Genially. And we have a few different sections that are useful within the platform. I hope they’re all useful, but here we go. We have presentations, infographics. These are the creation types, right? So if I wanted to look for a game, I would definitely click on Gamification to get started. Here’s that import PowerPoint option that you were talking about and as you can see, has a star on it. So as I mentioned, you would need at least the most basic paid plan. And you can see that all of the templates that don’t have a star on them are free, which is a lot of templates.

31:15
David Cole
Right.

31:16
Aili
And the ones that are the most of them here, for example. Yeah, I would say most of them are free. And then we have some premium templates that are, I will admit, really cool. Like, this is a witchcraft and wizardry quiz. So I have seen teachers really want this in their arsenal and they’ll pay for it. So this is how I would start with something like Gamification. I would go to the Gamification section here on the left bar. You’re going to be able to see what’s in each category. So I have quizzes games and escape games. Games is kind of the catch all for things that look like any of the board games you’re used to playing. Some of the old TV network games also that we used to get. We have some things that are familiar to those of you who watched games on the TV or still do Dungeons and Dragons.

32:12
Aili
Here. We’re in our escape room section. So just to give you an idea, I really like the video game one. I also really like the horror escape room. Highly recommend this one for teachers looking for something fun. So what would happen here? You would start on in, we get our introduction and they’re taken to this room. What I don’t remember is where you need to start you’re exploring the house takes us to a quiz. There are other sections where you need to move a flashlight around to find the clues. And then you fill in a code using the piano keys. It’s really complex and cool, but not that hard to put together once you’re on the inside. So you can find things that are as sort of elaborate as this. Then you can also find simpler. I’m trying to think of where I would go for something really simple.

32:58
Aili
Maybe interactive images, videos, training materials. Has I believe some simple. Here we have like basic learning units. So these would be good for building online courses. Simple unit plans for your students. This might be a good thing to build your personal template with. I would look here.

33:16
David Cole
I like the Ela unit plan. I used that as a base for mine.

33:21
Aili
Cool. Yeah, I like that one too. I like that one too. And I’ve used it also quite a bit. I also like some of these graphic organizers. I know that a lot of teachers are using these kinds of creations to make choice boards even though they’re not like anything with a list, anything with different icons. This would be a great choice board or playlist. And then we have also allocated choice board templates like this one. So I’ve made a Tequila Mockingbird choice board with this template before and you could either have students go to an individual page for each block or I could also just have a little pop up window for each of these rectangles. And then let’s take a quick look at more because most people then don’t know what’s in more, right? So in more we have things for phones, personal branding, which again is big I think increasingly important in the world we live in now.

34:18
Aili
Even for educators, actually even especially maybe for online educators. We have our cards, we have social media posts and then blank creation. This is where I’m going to go if I want to start anything off from scratch. I can choose the proportions of my canvas to start out. I can also change that once I’m inside the creation. So if I change my mind, that’s possible. And here are sort of the basic could also start with one of these basic blank presentation templates for example. And while we’re here, I will just quickly mention you can also head to the inspiration section and you can find examples like here’s Manny. This is his profile. Manny from Edpuzzle. Love him. You can see some of his Genially’s here and get some inspiration, see what other educators are creating.

35:08
David Cole
I saw your face on that list over there too a second ago. Right now?

35:12
Aili
Yeah, I’m there also you can check out my stuff. You can see some of the different escape rooms, quizzes, all sorts of creative creations or even like creation types that I would have never thought of. People are really creative. So find recipe books, all sorts of interactive images and yeah, definitely check out the inspiration section if you want ideas.

35:33
David Cole
There are a lot of things on carry out. If somebody creates something of their own and they’re really proud of it, are they able to get it onto the template gallery somehow? Or is it only for those that are employed by Gmail for the template galleries?

35:49
Aili
You mean for the inspiration who’s highlighted? Yes, this is something we’re working on right now. So excellent question. If you or any of your viewers are interested, I would love to hear from them personally because I have gotten a few requests already. We don’t currently have a formal process for that, but hopefully we will in the future. So right now it’s sort of like who caught the attention of who chose in the moment when our team was smaller than it is now. And now we have more processes and hopefully we’ll have a formal process for that soon.

36:21
David Cole
Sense. There are so many different people out there that are so creative of mind. You can see some of them being like and I really want others to know how to do it or use it too.

36:33
Aili
Yeah. Oh, you know what I will say though, is that right once things are inspiration, you can see all of the Genially that have these two recycle arrows here. These are reusable. So if I were to click one of these, I could use it as a template and then I would be inside the editor of this Genially. I would have my own version of this. So that is one reason. That’s another reason to look for other education examples is you can actually use a lot of them as templates for yourself. And I hear what you’re saying about especially motivated educators wanting to be a part of this section for that reason.

37:08
David Cole
Oh yeah, I’m sure because I get people all the time wanting to put things on. I created this and I don’t want it to go to waste. I used it one time. That’s why a lot of people know that’s one of the reasons why the tutor resource exists in the first place, so you don’t have to let it collect that digital dust. One of the things that’s great about the Genially is perfect embed code. You can embed it into the tutor resource and rent it or sell it or make it free for more teachers to have access to.

37:40
Aili
Perfect.

37:41
David Cole
And I believe you can also share your own personal area on here if you make them public.

37:47
Aili
You can that’s correct. Even if it’s not highlighted here. You would have your own social profile which you can then send to people, share it on social media, put it on your website, sort of whatever format is most stable for you.

38:00
David Cole
I love it. Options. That’s awesome.

38:04
Aili
Yeah. Hey David, how are we doing on time? Can we pop into the editor?

38:10
David Cole
Let’s do that because I was just looking at that. You’ve given out so much information so far, they’re probably feeling that creative itch already so let’s look at the editor. Let’s try to create something cool.

38:23
Aili
Okay, I’m going to start with my favorite, which is an interactive image, which as I said, is fast and it’s a lot of output, I guess, for very little input. And I can choose one of these as a starting point, which I’d then edit. Or I can start from a basic interactive image. I think just for today, I’ve done both at this point. Let’s start with I like this croissant recipe layout. And I’m going to use this to turn a worksheet that I have on New Orleans. I used to use this with English learners, actually at one point.

39:00
David Cole
Video for the background, or is it a GIF?

39:03
Aili
It depends. Some of them have oh, this must be a GIF. This must be a GIF. Unfortunately, I’m going to get rid of this GIF so that we can put something else behind it. First thing we see when we get into the editor is that some items may be locked. Here’s a little lock or unlock button. This is important. So, for example, I can see before I click on this, that it’s blue around the edges of the item, the image here. And that means that it’s locked and I’m going to need to unlock it if I want to move it. I think also to delete it. This is really important because sometimes if I’m, like, say, I want to select all these buttons and I want to drag my cursor around them, but I don’t want to be moving the background around, then I would want to lock the background.

39:49
Aili
So that’s why sometimes they come locked. So we’re going to delete that. We’re going to title this New Orleans, and I’m going to call it Call New Orleans a lot of different things because it has a lot to offer. We’re going to call it the City of Jazz Simplification. And here is the worksheet that I’m pulling from. This is just a doc, okay? And this is sort of a standard tiny worksheet layout, right? We have an image. I have a little paragraph of text. I’ve got a YouTube video. I’ve got a little bit more text and an image. So really standard, simple thing. We’re going to be flipping here and let’s see how we would do that. So first I’m going to start by changing the background. And I’m going to bring one in from my computer and we’re going to search. Let’s see, I think this is on my desktop, new Orleans background.

40:48
Aili
I’m going to open that up and that should pop into place. And then we’ll be deciding how many pins or hotspots we want to keep. Here we go. All right, so I don’t want quite this many. I’ve got text on music. I’ve got a video, which I’ll stick over here. And maybe I’ll leave this star and I’m going to get rid of everything else. I don’t want good backgrounds locked into place, which allows me to select all of these things at once with no issue. And let’s see how I would start to put things inside of my pins. So whenever I click on an element, whether it’s text, an image, a button, I’m going to see a few different icons above it. I know this is a lot of information, so hopefully people who are seeing this for the first time can kind of start to take it in.

41:38
Aili
But we’re going to have an option with a little hand on it. Here’s what an empty one looks like. So it’s just a little hand interactivity option. And then we have the comet. This is for animations. Let’s focus on interactivity for now. So this one already has an interactivity applied. It’s a window. And I’m going to use this window. But actually here, let’s delete it and start from scratch so you can see what this would look like. Add interactivity. And we’ve got a lot of options. We used to only have four, but our team has been developing so many new options. We have the reveal one you were talking about, David. We’ve got an option to expand what we’re seeing into a full screen. You can add an audio. We could link out to another page. This would allow me to navigate to other pages for buttons that take me around the creation.

42:24
Aili
I’m going to just focus on Tooltips and windows for now. So there’s our traditional window and our Tooltip. The tooltip is, as it says, a short label or description that appears when you hover the mouse. So it’s going to be like a little chat bubble. It’s good for really short amounts of text, a GIF, something small, anything bigger than that. I want a window. So I’m going to go with a window here. This is a better place to stick video, longer pieces of text, et cetera. Okay, let’s see what we have. The Civil War and Reconstruction. I’m going to stick this directly into my window, and I’m going to take this title, and instead of putting it there, I’m going to put it on the element name, and we’ll look at what happens when we do that. And I like my windows to be medium sized.

43:10
Aili
Generally speaking, it’s an aesthetic personal choice. Okay, next window. I’m going to, again, delete what’s already in this window. But here we have an example of what the videos are going to look like inside deleting. I’m going to add interactivity. I’m going to choose another window, and we’re going to stick our video in here. So medium here’s, what would normally be just the window. Sorry, just the video link from YouTube. And this time I’m going to start closing all these extra windows, getting lost in them. I’m going to go. I can insert images here and I can insert videos here. So I’ll go to insert video, I can paste in the URL, click Insert, and there it appears. And I’m going to call this V Ferguson and see what else did I have. Finally, I have an image and some more text. This is the city of Music.

44:09
Aili
Okay, so I’ll put this in here. Again, we’re going to delete what’s already in here. And if I started from scratch, obviously these would all be empty anyways. Add our interactivity. We’re going to choose a window I’m going to stick in my text, call it the City of Music. And let’s add our image down here. So, again, insert image. I’m going to insert it from my computer this time. New Orleans musicians. And there it is. Once it’s loaded, it’ll just take a few seconds. I will sorry.

44:54
David Cole
There’s size requirements for uploading images.

44:57
Aili
There are size requirements I think they can’t exceed. I believe the limit is five. There it is. Five megabytes. Five MB max is the limit for uploading images. Okay, so here’s our first quick little example. I’m going to preview it so you can see what we’ve just made and the little titles I was adding. That’s what’s showing up in my chat bubble. And then when I click on the button itself, I get the text that I put inside. Same here. Plus EV ferguson. When I click, I get the video that I have embedded inside that I can watch here. And this would also work with Google Forms, Google Maps, a lot of other external tools. And what’s great, you can add things from Twitter feeds, you can add an Instagram post, and everything that you add is live. So if I were to stick a map into here, my students would be able to navigate through the map in.

45:55
David Cole
The window in there as well. So you could embed your puzzle or something?

46:02
Aili
Absolutely. And to do that, I would go to insert others. And this is where I could either paste in, like, an iframe code, or I could go to some of these providers. They have easy ways to link in things from Drive or Twitter video. Drive is a good thing to connect if you’re using Google Drive, because then all of your content will also link through Genially. And you don’t have to go individually into Drive and bring it in. You can also add audios this way, but this is where you’d go for your embeds. And if I can really quickly, I’d like to show how I would take the same concept. We have another five minutes.

46:39
David Cole
Yeah, we have some time. Yeah.

46:40
Aili
Okay. I want to show how I would take the same concept that we just learned in terms of the technical stuff. And I could create more of a game or kind of an escape room feel from this. So I’m going to add a page over here, have it be blank. And this isn’t really relevant to what I want to be making, so well, try and decide whether or not it’s worth no, we’ll leave it alone. Okay, never mind. Erase that. Rewind for this. Let’s see. I’m going to use an escape room. I’ve done this once before, create an escape room library. So all we need for that is an image. And for the background here, different ways we could do this. Let’s just do it from an image. I’m going to go down to Pixabay, click Show More, and I’m going to search for a library, and I’m going to choose something that looks really complicated or like it would be fun to search through.

47:41
Aili
Right like this. And David and or audience, I’m going to need you to really pay attention to where we put our hidden questions and clues because then I’m going to forget where they are. It happens every single time. So pay attention. There’s a lot going on which is going to make it fun for students on the other end. And I’m going to lock this into place. Okay. And let’s see. So now, Interactive Elements is where I would have all of my buttons normally. So if I wanted to add a new button, I would go here. Luckily, the icon is pretty intuitive. It looks like a button. So I can choose from all sorts of buttons here if I click on Show More and then what’s more fun for something like an escape room is if I keep scrolling down. Some people don’t even know this exists, but it’s a big deal.

48:26
Aili
We have invisible interactive areas here. Didn’t know that was this is how you make anything easily.

48:34
David Cole
I made my own invisible image. Just transparent PNG.

48:38
Aili
Okay, well, this is how you’re going to do it. Now, or you have been using Reveal, which would also be a way around this or another way to do this. But here we have invisible areas. So learn something new, important, and we’re going to stick one here. This is where I need your help remembering where they go because I always forget. So we can copy and paste the same. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to copy control C, control V, this here, there. And I could also just keep dragging in from this left toolbar. And finally okay, we have 1230 gosh. Okay. And what’s going to happen, I’m going to add interactivity. I’m going to make it a tooltip this time. It’s a little chat bubble. I don’t need a lot of text. And I’m going to do this with math because it’s the one example that I came up with quickly, kind of on the fly the other day.

49:30
Aili
But you could also do this with any kind of worksheet content that you already have, right? Any of your fill in, these ten questions or three questions, you can put them onto multiple pages if you have more than say, I don’t know, six. But all we’re going to do is save one in there. I’m going to save another one in here. Yeah. And then we’re going to save the last one in. Oh, gosh. Here.

50:04
David Cole
Yeah, this one we haven’t done tooltip.

50:07
Aili
See, it’s hard not to get lost. And then all we need to add to this are some directions. So I’m going to add a visible button this time. So that we have some clear directions, a little info button, hence be clear. Add that. Well, no, then they’ll find the clue. Okay, I’ll add that here and inside my info button, I’m going to have the directions. So search the shelves for three math problems. Once you’ve solved all three, write the numbers in order from smallest to largest to create a three digit number. Then click the arrow and use the three digit code to unlock the next room. This is how this works, okay? And if I were doing something like a language class, then obviously maybe instead of numbers, I would have them take the first letter from each of their answers or the last letter from each of their answers, or the second to last letter, right?

50:59
Aili
It depends on how complex they want this to be. So here are my directions. And then all we need is that they’re going to solve these three problems and they’re going to want to go to the next page. So I’m going to add an arrow to the next page there. Add interactivity. Go to page. Wait, before we go to page, we need the page to exist. I know this is a little bit more complex, but I just want people to see how easy it is once they’ve gotten sort of the basics of the interactive image down to make something a little bit more original. Go to page. Next page. We’re going to save this and then our teachers are going to arrive here. Sorry, teachers, not our students are going to arrive here. And we would, I’m going to just say I would probably honestly put another set of clues in a different kind of room.

51:56
Aili
And this is how I would lead them through a house. But just for time’s sake, we’re going to keep it really simple and short. And I think that’s all we need. Last thing we need to do is we need to password protect the next page. So add password for the page. And here the password is going to be whatever they had to solve. So what did I say? Write the numbers in order from smallest to largest. So three, six, nine is going to be our password to go to the next page. And then what’s going to happen for our students is in the preview or when we present, they’re going to see our library. Here are their directions. Search the shells for three math problems. They’re going to be looking around like this. Oh, we found one. Okay, so I’m looking one, looking two, I find the third one, which is somewhere around here.

52:48
Aili
There we go. I’ve solved these in my notebook, or however I’m documenting my work, showing my work. And once I have them, I know to go to the next room, I have to enter the password, three, six, nine, and they’re on to the next room. That’s the basics of how I would turn something into an escape room pretty quickly.

53:09
David Cole
Yeah, that is really cool. I like it a lot. I have a whole Minecraft lesson that I am working on right now, trying to turn it into an escape room.

53:19
Aili
Cool.

53:21
David Cole
Minecraft and language is really cool.

53:25
Aili
Amazing.

53:26
David Cole
I think I can use now that password. I didn’t know about the password protector yet, so that’s going to be fun.

53:32
Aili
Got to run a summit, learn some things.

53:34
David Cole
I love it. You always learn something new. Yeah, I learned how to you already have the blank images, the invisible images.

53:46
Aili
Great. And saves a lot of time.

53:49
David Cole
How many interactivities can you have on event item? I know, I’ve like I’ve had full screen and clickable before and stuff like that. But how many can you do on them?

54:00
Aili
Yeah, so there’s not a single fixed answer to that. Because what it is that before you could only choose one. Maybe there was a way to do two. I don’t think so. I think you’d only choose one. And recently they added the ability to have multiple going at once called complementary interactivities internally. And then the answer is that it depends on which ones you’re applying because they basically don’t all work together. So there are certain things, like maybe I can’t I’m trying to think of what let me look really fast. But there’s not a set limit in terms of number. It’s more about what’s being applied to your element. I’m just taking a look to see for an example of what wouldn’t work so that it makes more sense. Let’s see. So we’re looking at Tooltip interactive window. Go to page. Well, obviously I can’t apply two kinds of window to the same item, right?

54:54
Aili
So there is a limitation. And then maybe I can’t remember, for example, if Go to page would allow me to work with something else because maybe I just click on it and I can only click on that.

55:04
David Cole
There’s limitations like that full screen at the same time?

55:07
Aili
Yeah, I think not, though. I’ve been surprised because they’ve been coming up with more things. Like sometimes you can, but the first click is reveal and the second click is go to page. So the full answer is play around with it. Play around with it.

55:23
David Cole
All right, well, that was an excellent demo. Thank you so much for showing everybody that you’re going to have so many people making so many little escape room. It’s going to be fun.

55:34
Aili
I would love that.

55:37
David Cole
All right, now you have a special promo that you wanted to talk to our guests about today. Can you tell us a little bit?

55:44
Aili
Yes, it’s a two part promo. So part one, we have a discount code for anybody looking to get an.edu Pro plan. So if they wanted access to all of the templates or more advanced features. And for that at Checkout, they just need to enter Tutor Resource 25. It’s 25% off, and that’s good. Until the 15 June, part one. And then part two is we’re raffling off five pro plans for free through a form. What’s the best way for me to get this to you, David? Should I pass it to you afterwards?

56:14
David Cole
Just send it to me afterwards and I will include it in a link below.

56:17
Aili
Perfect. So people could enter for that, and then we’ll draw five winners.

56:22
David Cole
That is awesome. The Ed pro is so cool. You’re able to do so much with it, so I love it.

56:31
Aili
Highly recommended.

56:33
David Cole
Yes, definitely. But those of you just wanting to get started, check out a free plan. It’s really cool. Play around, make a few things. Use the shooter resource link to upgrade when you’re ready because it’s amazing and it gives you a chance to have access to those premium, the star ones that are on the templates and every other feature like branding and things like that down the road.

56:57
Aili
That’s right.

57:01
David Cole
That’s my two cent. And if you have any questions about it, you can always send me a message. I’ve been using Genially for a while. We’ll have some contact information on here as so, Eileen, do you have any.

57:17
Aili
Words of advice, inspiration, parting advice? Check out the free plan. Like, seriously, it can do a lot. Don’t let it stop you. This idea that maybe you’re going to need upgrade, you may even not. So luckily from Community, my job is not to sell anything. You can start free, you can stay free, and there’s a lot you can do with that. So I would definitely check it out.

57:39
David Cole
Very cool. Well, thank you for your time today. It’s been awesome.

57:44
Aili
Thanks so much, David. Yeah, I’ve really enjoyed this.

57:47
David Cole
It’s really been inspirational. There’s a lot of cool things, and I’ve got some really cool ideas going through my head. Now. After our lunch call, everybody definitely take a look at all the information that we have down below. Also some information on how to use some information on where you can find some of the templates, as well as the discount codes that mentioned, as well as the raffle.

58:12
Aili
Awesome. I’ll share out my Twitter handle also for anybody looking to connect with me or wanting to show me what they’re creating. I’d love to see that or any questions when I come my way.

58:23
David Cole
All right, thank you so much for your time, and I’m sure people are going to be in touch. Bye, everyone.

58:32
Aili
Bye, guys. Bye, everyone. Bye.