ThingLink

Topic: Project-Based Learning (PBL)

ThingLink is a robust tool that teachers can use or assign to make interactive resources. They can be part of the lesson itself or a supplemental resource to help students. One can add text and images to a scene, create a virtual tour, and even embed video and 3rd-party website content.

The ThingLink above is an sample submission I made for a PBL over converting energy from one form to another. The assignment has the students researching real-world devices or designing their own. The standard suggests renewable energy devices like wind turbines or solar panels, but Rube Goldberg machines are also an option. This example is over a real water turbine and shows the bare minimum of what is expected.

I would also use ThingLink to help supplement lessons and even for flipped classrooms. The directions below use a supplemental text that I created over hemoglobin which students could access outside of class to help them study.

The sky's the limit with ThingLink. If you can think it, you can probably create it and there are a lot of features for free (paid subscription is $35/yr which add more editing features and a larger 360° image library. I will use this a supplemental resource for information like what I have created above. Or, I will use this as a means of instruction through a technology skill, like how to use WebMO and other computational chemistry software. The process of calculating molecules can fit a virtual tour setting and I can train using screenshots.

Most likely this technology will be used by the teacher, but it is possible for students to create assignments using ThingLink, if teacher's are willing to work through the learning curve. If this is used in an assignment, then assessment would then be probably best done through a rubric. Otherwise, there are some stats associated with scenes (primarily views) that some teachers may find useful.

Steps to use ThingLink:

  1. Create an account/log into ThingLink

  2. Click Create button

  3. Upload an image (360° images are now supported)

  4. This creates a scene and is listed in your files

  5. Open the newly uploaded image and click the pencil button (edit button)

  6. Click + Add Tag

    • Add text and media allows one to add a block of text, video, and/or audio.

    • Add text label adds a simple text tag, but has a character limit of 100. The ThingLink above uses these to point out small facts about the protein model (the tags with book images)

    • Add content from website allows one to embed media from YouTube or other websites. The ThingLink above uses this on the second scene to show an animation on hemoglobin works plus a website that has a 360° image of the protein from the inside.

    • Create tour allows one to move to a new scene. The ThingLink above uses this to switch between different protein modeling schemes.

    • Each option gives you an icon to use and there are several icons to choose from, each with a myriad of colors.

  7. Click Done when the tag has been made

  8. Click Done when all the tags have been made to go back to the scene's main page

  9. Click the eye button (privacy settings) to change the privacy. Unlisted is helpful if you want to simply hand out the link to the students. This is important to do before students are to visit the ThingLink!

  10. Click Share if you wish to embed the ThingLink as I have done above. Simply copy the embed code and paste into the embed text box on the site on which you wish to embed.

Example View of user's content, a scene's main page, and scene editor

The files folder of the scenes. This can be organized into a filesystem, but I have not done so yet. Notice that 360° images have an aspect ratio and resolution requirements.