Resources & tools

Resources we have used to build interactive readings, assignments and labs.

  1. Google Street-View virtual tour of the Pacific Museum of the Earth. This was constructed by authorized Google Photographer G. Lascu in CTLT.
  2. A list of active readings, assignments and virtual labs (with links) is given on a separate page.
  3. (Very inexpensive for educational purposes): The tool used to create zooming high resolution images, including a range of interactive behaviors. For each zooming image, zoomify builds a collection of HTML, XML, Javascript and JPG resources which must be stored somewhere that the complete file and folder structure can be kept intact. We store such resources in course web-space on the EOAS departmental server.Examples are found using the virtual lab space, or one example can be seen directly here.
  4. (costs, but not high): Focus-stacked for infinite depth of field on specimens or museum exhibits (zooming or not).
  5. (free): Annotated rotating and zooming specimens, exhibits or scenes using. Our favorite example so far is the quartz cluster exhibit.
  6. Camtasia (site license at UBC) for editing videos of “handling” specimens and generating screen-casts for documentation or tutorials targeting students, TAs and instructors.
  7. Online sketching: Literallycanvas (free (but tricky to set up) HTML-5 and javascript) for annotating images and generating results as PNG for submission (grading and/or group discussions). Here is a demonstration of sketching widget.
  8. hotpotatoes (free HTML and javascript with associated CSS) for building interactive readings. The HTML sequences are built offline and are installed within LMS as a set of HTML, image and css files all in one folder.
  9. Interactive imagemaps; mobilefish (free; generates snippets of imagemap code with javascript that must be added to existing HTML files). There are other similar resources, but this one works just fine for our purposes.
  10. LMS “quizzes” for auto-graded data entry, incorporating multiple choice, multiple answer, mix/match, jumbled sentence, hotspot, fill-blank and numeric question types. There are many introductions, guidelines and detailed instructions for each question type available. The UBC guidelines are here.
  11. Online databases from reliable long term providers are invaluable for enabling students to engage with data. Examples we have used include these, although many others are likely out there.
  12. The following open, interactive resources for engaging with geophysical data and methods are accessible to beginners and research-level experts alike. They have been continuously developed and updated for over 20 years, and current researchers continue to modernized the facilities in 2017. See