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So are you interested in taking student writing and transforming it into an interactive website
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Well, you are in the right place. Over the next few minutes, I'll show you exactly
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how to transform student writing with Adobe Spark. So let's start from the beginning. I'm sure that
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you've assigned your students assignments kind of like this one. It's really just a one-page
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informational type of writing assignment. So I have this here, and what I'm going to use
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is Adobe Spark. And here we are at spark.adobe.com. This is a free service from Adobe that will let
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you create several different types of media. And you can see right over here at the bottom
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including webpages with Spark page. And that's what we are going to use to transform that
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writing assignment. Now, a few things about Adobe Spark. There is a free version. There's also a
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paid version, but if you are a school district, you can actually sign up for your own Adobe Spark
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education domain. I'll put the information in the notes below. After you create your account
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in Adobe Spark, you'll be taken to this dashboard, which will allow you to create your different
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projects. And what I'm going to do is select the plus button and choose this option right at the
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bottom that says webpage. Okay. So this is where I'll need the student writing assignment. And it's
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right over here that I have in my pages document. Now you can see this is a word processing program
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pages that I have. It doesn't matter which program you use, whether it's word or it's
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Google docs or whatever else, that's not going to matter. But what will matter is using Spark
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page to create that website. So I'm just going to name my site, the same name that I named my
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writing and that's hang up and drive. I'm just going to take this and paste this. This is the
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header. Now we'll talk about adding some different parts on here, but this is the header. It's going
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to be the top part of the website that people are going to see when they first, when they first click
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on the button to open the site. So one of the things that Spark does is it allows you to add
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images without actually searching for them on the internet separately. So you can see I click the
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plus button. There's ways that I could upload photos if I have them, but if I don't have any
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individual photos, in this case of someone driving, I can actually search for those photos
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You can see right here, directly free photos. It's going to search for driver and let's see if I can
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find someone in the front seat. How about this photo? Now, what I didn't tell you about this
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photo is that all the photos that Adobe includes in the program. When you search our photos that
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have a creative commons license assigned, which means that they're photos that are okay to use
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from a copyright standpoint, which is something that's really helpful if you are an educator
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So now I have my header right over here and now what I want to do is start adding the different
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parts of my writing. So here you can see that this is my first paragraph. I'm just going to take this
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paragraph. I'm going to click on text. This will allow me to add text and it'll kind of look like
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that. Now, depending on the theme that you choose, it's going to restrict the type of font you can
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have. So there's not an easy way to change the font. There are things that you can do in your
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text such as make it bold, italicize it. You can also make certain parts of your text hyperlinks
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You can see the hyperlink right over here. So I'm just going to leave this the way it is and I'm
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going to go to the next part of my writing and the next part is this quote from the New England
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Journal of Medicine. I'm going to take this text, just do the same exact thing. I'm going to create
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a new text area on my site, kind of like that. I'm going to highlight that and I'm going to
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make this a quote. There we go. And now you'll notice that that quote kind of stands out on my
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page as opposed to just leaving it in the plain text area. All right. And now what I want to do is
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add this part. This is kind of a long paragraph. Okay. So what I want to do before I add this
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paragraph is I'm just going to add another photo in line. And again, if I just click the plus button
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and select photo, it's going to remember my photos. Now this particular paragraph
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focuses a little bit about driving with cell phones. Right. So what I'm going to do is just
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click on photo and I'm going to say texting and car. Let's see what comes up. Okay. Maybe something
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like this. Perfect. So my paragraph is here. Now I mentioned earlier, one of the things you can do
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is actually hyperlink your text to a different website. So this line right here, the California
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traffic safety summit, I can highlight that and I can actually hyperlink that
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to that particular website. Now, when people read my website, they can click that, that
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that area of text that I have here, and they can actually go to the state of California traffic
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website, which is kind of interesting. All right, now let me go back. I want to add something else
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What I want to add now is a video. Maybe I have a video, a PSA about not texting and driving
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Let's check out to see what I can find. So I was able to go on YouTube and find this great PSA
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about texting and driving. So what I want to do now is just copy that address
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go back to spark, paste that address, select save. And in just a few seconds, you'll notice
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that that video is now embedded on my website. So a few things that you might notice here with
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the text that I just added. One of the things is this text kind of stands out. All I did
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I added this, selected the text and chose this option, which is headline two, which will kind
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of make that as a smaller headline. Headline one is a bigger headline as well. So now I want to
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show you one additional thing that you can add that really gives your website kind of a cool
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interactive feel. And that is the option to add a glide show. So if I just choose this option
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that says texting car, or I'm just going to say driver, and I'm just going to take some different
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pictures that I might want to use that might help illustrate this particular article. Again
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I was just able to find those instantly in spark. I'm going to click save. And now what you'll
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notice is that as I kind of go through, you'll see visitors of my site will be able to see
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these large photos. Now I could click on this box and add a little bit more text that pertains to
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this particular photo. And as I keep scrolling, you'll notice the photos will change. There's a
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new caption where I can add more text at the bottom. So this is really a cool way that you
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can make your site interactive by adding different types of material. Now, if you don't like the
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glide show and you want more of a standard view, you can select those photos again, kind of like
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I did right over here. And rather than having them appear like this at the bottom, you'll
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notice that it will just show them in these individual grids where you can click on that
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button where you can click on the photos. They'll then open in a bigger view. Now
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if you want to preview how the site will look to other people who click on now, if you want
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to preview to see how the site is going to look for visitors, all you have to do is click the
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preview button and you'll get an idea of what the site currently looks like. Now my site is just
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about finished. I've got some great photos. I was able to copy and paste my text. I have a header
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I added a video. Now I want to share this. So to share it, it's super simple. All you do is just
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click on the share button, click this option that says publish and share link. I'm just going to
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leave this the way it is. I do have to pick a category, so I'm just going to say education
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I'm going to choose create link. And in just a few seconds, this link will be ready. Here it is
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I can copy that link. And then when people click on that link that I share
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this is the website that they'll be able to view. So in just a few minutes, I was able to take that
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writing that I have already created, copy and paste that into spark page, add some photos that
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you're looking at right over here instantly without having to search and download and save them
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And then publish and share my link all easily through Adobe spark