Textivate MATCH activities with IMAGES...

This feature has been available for quite some time, but I haven't blogged about it, so here goes:

Textivate allows you to make interactive matching activities (and worksheets) matching images with text.

Here's how it's done:

Click on the "Match" tab.

Then add your image-to-text matching data in the following format:

[img]full link to the image file, starting with http:// or https://[/img]==your matching text

e.g.:

Simple, right?

The only problem is that you can't upload your images to textivate. They have to be hosted somewhere else online. (The examples on this page use images that have been uploaded to the textivate website for demonstration purposes.)

Where can I upload images so that they can be used in textivate?

The fasted option is:

IMGUR

It's dead easy to use. You can sign in with your facebook login. You can create folders and add images to them by simple drag and drop. You can set your account settings to hidden, so that your images don't appear in the general public uploads list.

Here's an example using some basic food and drink vocab / images: https://www.textivate.com/ltzjn1

Here's a link to the album on imgur: https://imgur.com/a/SWkim -- as you can see, it isn't completely private, because I can share it with you, but it is hidden and can only be accessed via the url.

Note that you have to add .jpg or .png or .gif to the imgur link for each image, so that it is recognised as a picture by textivate. (I don't think it matters which you add.)

Another option:

DROPBOX

If you have a dropbox account, you can copy images to your dropbox. From the folder view on your computer, right-click the image file, and then "Copy dropbox link". Then paste the URL into textivate.

NB. By default the dropbox URL ends with dl=0 (which means "do not download"). You'll need to change this 0 for a 1 so that each URL ends with dl=1 (i.e. download the image) for it to work properly in textivate.

Note that there is often a bit of a delay when using dropbox links, which is why we suggested IMGUR as a better option.

Update 24/11/2020 - a new option!

GOOGLE DRIVE

I always thought that using Google Drive images wouldn't work because the image link that you get is a link to a page containing the image rather than a link to the image itself. Thanks to Dwight Hensler (of Haven of Peace Academy, Tanzania) for showing me how it can be done.

Right-click on the image file, click on "Get link". Make sure the share is set to public, so that anyone with the link can access the file. Then copy the long image ID string from the middle of the URL.

e.g. from this share URL...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz5KS2ajJ6IqczRuR192dVJ2VU0/view?usp=sharing
...copy the ID only:
0Bz5KS2ajJ6IqczRuR192dVJ2VU0

Then use this in the following way:
https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=0Bz5KS2ajJ6IqczRuR192dVJ2VU0

If you like, you can copy and paste the line below multiple times and then paste over the "ReplaceThisWithImageID" with the image ID, and add the matching text to the right of the == signs. (Simply double-click ReplaceThisWithImageID to select it, then paste the ID to over-write it.)

[img]https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=ReplaceThisWithImageID[/img]==

There's a separate blog post about this in case you need the above broken down further.

Here's what you end up with if you create a Match resources using images:

The menu screen for the above data. >> So you get the same full range of matching activities as you get when matching text items.

(Actually, you can combine image-to-text and text-to-text matching items in the same resource. And you can combine all of this with a text resource too!)

Here are a few embedded activities, just so you can see what it looks like:

FLASHCARDS: Click below to access the activity. (Opens in a new window on touch devices.)