Scavenger Hunt

Welcome! If you have never used Obsidian or Markdown before, you might wonder why these notes look like plain text and how they turn into a polished website for your students.

Here is the secret: you already know how to plan great lessons. Obsidian is just a distraction-free digital notebook stored safely on your computer, and Plantoir is your automated website builder. When you click Preview or Deploy in Plantoir, your notes are instantly turned into a fast, searchable website with navigation, hover previews, and clean typography.

Opening your course in Obsidian

• If you have not installed Obsidian yet, download it free from obsidian.md/download.
• You can open this entire course in Obsidian at any time from Plantoir: simply right-click (or Control-click) on your class section in Plantoir and choose “Open in Obsidian”.

You do not need to learn dozens of complex computer tricks. There are just 7 short stations that give you almost all of the power.

This scavenger hunt takes about 10 minutes. Work through the challenges below right here on this page. Each challenge has a Goal, a Practice Sandbox, a folded Hint, and a folded Solution so you can check your work as you go.

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Station 1: The Quick Switch

In Obsidian, you write in plain text with a few simple punctuation marks. Obsidian lets you view your notes in two ways:

1. Editing View — where you type your words and format them.
2. Reading View — where Obsidian renders all formatting, highlights, and callouts cleanly.

You can switch between them in a fraction of a second with a single keyboard shortcut:

• Mac: Press ⌘ + E
• Windows: Press Ctrl + E (You can also click the small book or pen icon in the top right corner of the note window).

Try it right now!

Press ⌘ + E (or Ctrl + E) right now. Notice how this callout turns into a smooth coloured box and the solutions below fold up. Press it again to return to editing mode and start Station 2!

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Station 2: Text that Teaches

Students rarely read a wall of plain text; they scan for structure and key terms. Markdown lets you format text as quickly as you type:

• **bold** draws the eye to important instructions or deadlines.
• *italics* adds gentle emphasis or book/play titles.
• ==highlights== puts a bright yellow highlighter across vocabulary words or key concepts.
• ## Headings organise your page into sections.

Why headings matter in Plantoir

Every ## heading you write automatically becomes a clickable link in the Navigate this page table of contents on the right side of your published website! You never have to build a table of contents by hand.

Your Goal

In the practice box below, format the raw draft announcement:

1. Make the first line an ### sub-heading.
2. Put the due date (Friday at 3:00 PM) in bold.
3. Highlight the key vocabulary term (focal point).
4. Put the reminder note (submitted via student portfolio) in italics.

Practice Sandbox 2

(Edit the text below)

Unit 1 Project Checkpoint Please remember that your initial draft is due Friday at 3:00 PM. All drafts must be submitted via student portfolio before our next class. Key concept for today: focal point is the area of a composition that first attracts the viewer’s attention.

Need a hint? (click to expand)

• Add ### to the start of the title line.
• Surround text with ** for bold: **Friday at 3:00 PM** (Shortcut: ⌘/Ctrl + B).
• Surround text with == for highlight: ==focal point==.
• Surround text with * for italics: *submitted via student portfolio* (Shortcut: ⌘/Ctrl + I).

Solution & Visual Check (click to expand)

What you type in editing view:

### Unit 1 Project Checkpoint
Please remember that your initial draft is due **Friday at 3:00 PM**.
All drafts must be *submitted via student portfolio* before our next class.
Key concept for today: ==focal point== is the area of a composition that first attracts the viewer's attention.

How it looks to your students:

Unit 1 Project Checkpoint

Please remember that your initial draft is due Friday at 3:00 PM. All drafts must be submitted via student portfolio before our next class. Key concept for today: focal point is the area of a composition that first attracts the viewer’s attention.

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Station 3: The Living Web

In traditional word processors, documents sit in isolated files. In Obsidian and Plantoir, your pages connect together like a real web.

To create a link to another page in your course:

1. Type two open square brackets: [[
2. Start typing the name of any page in your course (like Help Sessions or Learning Goals).
3. Obsidian shows a pop-up menu of matching notes. Press Return or Enter to select it!

Custom Display Words (Piped Links)

What if you want to link to a page called Help Sessions.md, but you want the sentence to read: “Come to our after-school help clinic”? Use the vertical bar | (called a pipe):

[[Target Page Name|Words students read]]

Why links are magic in Plantoir

• Hover Previews: On your website, students can hover their cursor over any [[link]] to read a pop-up preview of that page without navigating away.
• Backlinks: At the bottom of every page, Quartz gathers an automatic list of every class or assignment that links to it!

Your Goal

In the practice box below:

1. Add a direct link to [[Help Sessions]] on item 2.
2. Add a piped link on item 3 pointing to Learning Goals that displays as our course learning goals.

Practice Sandbox 3

(Edit the lines below)

1. Warm-up: Review today’s agenda.
2. Need extra help? Check our schedule on [insert link to Help Sessions].
3. For homework, review [insert piped link to Learning Goals that reads ‘our course learning goals’].

Need a hint? (click to expand)

• For item 2: Type [[Help Sessions]].
• For item 3: Type [[Learning Goals|our course learning goals]]. (The | pipe key is usually typed with Shift + </kbd>).

Solution & Visual Check (click to expand)

What you type in editing view:

1. Warm-up: Review today's agenda.
2. Need extra help? Check our schedule on [[Help Sessions]].
3. For homework, review [[Learning Goals|our course learning goals]].

How it looks to your students:

1. Warm-up: Review today’s agenda.
2. Need extra help? Check our schedule on Help Sessions.
3. For homework, review our course learning goals.

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Station 4: Engaging Callouts

Callouts pull key information out of the flow of the page with friendly colours and icons:

• > [!tip] Useful Tip (green / light bulb)
• > [!note] Lesson Note (blue / pencil)
• > [!important] Crucial Rule (purple / flame)
• > [!warning] Common Mistake (orange / triangle)
• > [!danger] Safety (red / stop)

Collapsible (Folded) Callouts

Adding a single hyphen - immediately after the bracket makes a callout collapsible:

> [!question]- Self-Check: What is the shortcut for Reading View? (click to reveal)
> 
> Press **Command-E** (Mac) or **Control-E** (Windows)!

On your website, students see a clean question box. When they click on it, the answer expands smoothly. This is perfect for practice questions, reflection prompts, and hints!

Your Goal

In the practice box below, build a collapsible [!question]- callout with a question in the title and a hidden answer inside.

Practice Sandbox 4

(Create your callout below)

Try It Yourself: How do you create an internal link in Obsidian? (click to reveal)

(Write the answer inside this callout!)

Need a hint? (click to expand)

Start every line of the callout with > . First line: > [!question]- Your Question Title Second line: > Your hidden answer text here.

Solution & Visual Check (click to expand)

What you type in editing view:

> [!question]- Quick Quiz: How do you create an internal link in Obsidian? (click to reveal)
> Type double square brackets: `[[Page Name]]`. Obsidian will even autocomplete it for you!

How it looks to your students:

Quick Quiz: How do you create an internal link in Obsidian? (click to reveal) [[Page Name]]. Obsidian will even autocomplete it for you!

Type double square brackets:

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Station 5: Transclusion

In a normal document setup, if your office hours or classroom rules change, you have to edit six different files.

Obsidian has a superpower called Transclusion (embedding). Putting an exclamation mark ! in front of a link embeds that entire page live inside another page:

![[Help Sessions]]

When you change the date or room in Help Sessions.md, every page where you embedded it updates automatically on your website.

Your Goal

In the practice sandbox below, embed the Help Sessions note right into the page.

Practice Sandbox 5

(Embed Help Sessions below)

Below is our current extra help schedule:

(Embed Help Sessions here)

Need a hint? (click to expand)

Type ! followed by [[Help Sessions]] on its own line: ![[Help Sessions]].

Solution & Visual Check (click to expand)

What you type in editing view:

Below is our current extra help schedule:
 
![[Help Sessions]]

How it looks to your students: When rendered, the actual contents of Help Sessions.md will appear cleanly framed inside the page!

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Station 6: The Teacher’s Cloak

You often want to keep notes to yourself (answer keys, pacing reminders for next year, student accommodations) without students ever seeing them.

1. In-line Teacher Comments

In Obsidian, wrap any private text in double percent signs: % % private note % `%.

For example, when writing your lesson notes:

• Public line: Please complete questions 1 through 5 for tomorrow.
• Private line: % % Note for next year: Most students struggled with #3; allocate 10 extra minutes. % %

In Obsidian, you will see the comment in grey text while editing. When Plantoir builds your website, these comments are completely stripped out before the site is generated — private comments never leave your computer, so they literally do not exist on the website your students see.

2. Holding Back a Page (publish: false)

At the very top of every file is a header between two lines of dashes --- (called frontmatter).

• If you set publish: true, the page is included on the website.
• If you set publish: false, Plantoir skips that page entirely during the build — it stays strictly on your computer and is never published or uploaded anywhere.

This lets you plan next week’s unit or draft a quiz in advance without students stumbling upon it early.

Your Goal

In the practice box below:

1. Write a public instruction for students.
2. Add a private teacher-only comment wrapped in double percent signs (% `%).

Practice Sandbox 6

(Add your notes below)

Students: Please bring your project rough draft to class tomorrow. (Add a private comment below this line that will never leave your computer)

Need a hint? (click to expand)

In Obsidian, wrap your private note in two percent signs before and after: % % Remember to prepare the sample rubrics on the front table before period 2. % %

Solution & Visual Check (click to expand)

What you type in Obsidian editing view:

• Line 1: Students: Please bring your project rough draft to class tomorrow.
• Line 2: % % Reminder to self: Period 2 is running 10 minutes ahead of Period 4. % %

How it looks to your students on the published website:

Students: Please bring your project rough draft to class tomorrow.

(The private comment is completely stripped out during the build and never exists on the published site!)

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Station 7: The Plantoir Loop

Now for the best part: seeing your work transformed into a real, live website.

Your Daily Teaching Rhythm

When running a course with Plantoir, your daily routine is simple:

1. Write in Obsidian: Open today’s class page (or duplicate _DUPLICATE ME.md in any folder) and write your agenda with a few links.
2. Click Preview in Plantoir: Open the Plantoir desktop app and click the Preview button for your class section.
3. Check Your Browser: Your default browser will open with your live course website. Keep this browser window side-by-side with Obsidian!
4. Live Updates: When you save changes in Obsidian, your preview website refreshes automatically within seconds.

Your Final Mission

1. Switch to the Plantoir app on your computer.
2. Click Preview for Section 1.
3. In the browser tab that opens, click Scavenger Hunt at the bottom of Key Links (or press ⌘ + K / Ctrl + K and search for it).
4. See your completed challenges rendered live on the website, and click your collapsible callouts to test them!
5. The Final Step — Unpublish This Tutorial: Now that you have completed the hunt, you don’t need students to see this practice page. Scroll to the very top of this file in Obsidian, change publish: true to publish: false, and save. Switch back to your preview browser — the Scavenger Hunt page is gone from your website, but remains safely in your Obsidian vault whenever you need a quick reminder!

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Quick Reference

Keep this table handy whenever you are writing course notes:

What you want to do	What you type in Obsidian	What it does for your students
Link to another page	[[Page Name]]	Clickable link with instant hover pop-up preview
Link with custom text	[[Page Name|Display words]]	Clickable link showing friendly display words
Embed an entire page	![[Page Name]]	Inserts the live page (write once, updates everywhere)
Callout box	> [!tip] Tip Title	Coloured box with icon to highlight key information
Collapsible self-check	> [!question]- Quiz Title	Box with hidden content that expands on click
Section heading	## Topic Title	Header + automatically added to Table of Contents
Highlight vocabulary	==Key term==	Bright highlight to draw student attention
Private teacher note	% % Note to self % %	Stripped during build; never leaves your computer
Hold back a draft	publish: false in header	Never published or uploaded until you set to true

You are now fully equipped to build and run an incredible, connected course website. Whenever you want to create a new page, look for _DUPLICATE ME.md in any folder, duplicate it, and start writing!