Bring still images to life: Thinglink.com does that.

02/14/2013

Student created 20 mins after post

I have known about Thinglink.com for at least a year. But it has been blocked at school and I never really saw a need to push the issue. However, yesterday I was thinking about a mini lesson that I do on Middle Ages art for our Middle Ages Quest (see it here) and realized that several kids will be out when I begin that lesson next week. As I was wondering how to handle that, Thinglink came to mind. I had seen it but never used it. I emailed the District Office and they opened Thinglink.com in about 20 minutes. So, today I spent about an hour making the two below. I do think I will get better and faster at it, but I also have a feeling that I will not need to do many more, as the students will take over.

I posted a short blog on my school website about Thinglink, and within 40 minutes a student showed me the one above. He had used google earth (which I used with them yesterday to tag different Cathedrals all around Europe for the quest) and he made one for his blog post as a Knight. He is writing his blog about taking a pilgrimage to a Cathedral in first person. If he built one based on a post without any pushing...most students will love using it and all I have to do is show them how and pick out the best. They rock!

A few things to remember:
-Free
-Easy to upload any photo or use flickr photo's
-In edit just click and add text, links, images, podcasts and even youtube's directly in the image

Thinglink.com is fun and a great way to bring images to life. Not to mention a great teaching tool for our visual students. If you make one, leave a comment and a link to your Thinglink.

Cheers, Garth

Click all the buttons for a feel of what you can do.

Comments

Allison Dennison link

02/14/2013 7:55pm

Thanks for this information. What a great site. I could really use it in my Spanish classes when we study other countries!

Leah LaCrosse link

02/14/2013 9:28pm

So, the implications in science are tumbling around in my mind. I could see my students interacting with a series circuit diagram, image of a lab design, picture of an auditorium to explore sound...
Thank you!

Garth

02/14/2013 9:36pm

Leah, yes endless ideas and ways to use this. Not sure about IPad. Mike and I plan to see lots of these in the next few weeks on kids blogs. They really like to Photoshop themselves into the historical images and now being able to add this.....watch out. Looking forward to see you at #craftedu soon.

Leah LaCrosse link

02/14/2013 10:27pm

First try! http://www.thinglink.com/scene/358804047798468610Not too bad.
The iPad entry of links was not friendly! I switched over to a keyboard and used the keyboard commands (command + v) to drop in the web links.

Leah LaCrosse link

02/14/2013 10:29pm

I am looking forward to #craftedu! Great combination. ;)

Garth link

02/21/2013 5:36pm

Made a quick tutorial on how to make these: http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cInroXV2vV Hope it helps. If you make one leave a link in the comment section for others to see.

Kerry Hale

02/24/2013 3:15pm

Thinglink is great... I am beginning to imagine all ways this can be useful to my future students in art classes. From frescos and paintings to architecture and photography - Thinglink can be a valuable tool for students to understand the many aspects of art (and history for that matter!).

Amanda Halman

04/18/2013 1:21pm

This seems like a really great site. I feel like for students who are absent often or students who are extremely visual and have a hard time during auditory instruction this would be awesome. Putting up a historical image and capturing their vocab and other important ideas while they're still getting the imagery seems to be a great connection.

Danielle Zampelli

04/28/2013 6:06pm

This is really cool! I was thinking that I could upload a picture of a kitchen and have different appliances and pieces of equipment labeled so that students can learn their uses in FCS!

Jeremy Husted link

05/01/2013 3:50pm

First off, I am loving Thinglink. It's an easy add-in to just about anything you teach and I think it works great. But secondly, I can't fathom why your district would have ever blocked it. Do they block everything by default and only allow a select few sites through the firewall? Because that seems terrible. The alternative, I guess, would be that someone said, "Thinglink? sounds suspicious." Blocked. In either case, weird.

Tristan Foyle

05/10/2013 4:18pm

This is just an excellent tool to use in order to set up a fun interactive learning experience.