Create a Sitemap of a Talmud page (or Chumash, or a Frog) Using Thinglink

Building a Clickable Sitemap of an Image

You can do what I am about to demonstrate with a picture of anything, like the Periodic Table, a political cartoon, or the internal organs of a frog, but since some on the Jewish Studies staff seem to be at a loss for using tech in the classroom, I thought I'd offer some ideas. :-)

Let's obtain a picture of a page of Talmud (or a page from a Mikra'ot Gedolot). To make it harder, let's look for a page that we're actually going to be teaching this year.

Quick & Dirty Method of Getting a Picture File

Life is always better if you can avoid unnecessary steps. If you can find a picture file (.jpg, .gif, .png) of what you want, you're hafway home. Skip to the section title Now we have an image file.

There are picture files (jpegs) of every page of Talmud on e-daf.com. Find your page and right-click and select Save image as...  
They aren't the clearest in the world, but they will do the job for this exercise.

Fancy-Shmancy Method for the Best Copy Possible

If you can't find an image file, you may be forced to convert a .pdf. Without doubt, the clearest .pdf copy of a Talmud page can be found at the Daf Yomi Portal. Seriously. Download a page and enlarge it to 300% in Adobe Reader and compare for yourself.

(To download, put the cursor over the picture of the daf and then click on צורת הדף.) 

This method I am describing will also work for any pdf you want to use, like grabbing a page of Chumash from Hebrewbooks.org. 

Once you have your .pdf, you can convert it to an image file.

The best conversion of .pdf to .jpg I've found is online at this multi-faceted site. (I've blogged in praise of it previously.) Upload your .pdf and turn it into a .jpg.

Now we have an image file

Go to Thinglink, register or sign in, and upload your picture.

Here is a quick tutorial (not mine) on using Thinglink.

I decided to mix it up and linked to web pages (do your students know that Ein Mishpat and Masoret HaShas were written by the same guy? They will after they finish their research!), pictures, videos, a gematria calculator (for the daf number) and an old encyclopedia page. You can also encourage (or demand) that your students create their own sources to link to.

Here is what I came up with.