Community reviews for ThingLink

I think that this tool definitely gives students the creative ability to construct their own knowledge about a topic through the use of the base image. As a teaching tool itself, an educator could search through the already constructed images to find one that fits their theme and use it for direct teaching. But if you are looking for a start up and go teaching tool, this isn't it- it is a creative annotation tool that requires work to get a finished product. In my opinion this is an engaging program/app that allows students to explore the Internet for supporting information and media pertinent to a topic; an alternative to the end of unit assessment. It can easily be adapted for individual or group work, and a teacher of students with special needs could do more direct teaching as the students verbally generate the tags. I know that the search feature for tags requires spelling accuracy for the best search choices, so this could be a roadblock for students with spelling difficulties. Overall, I feel a teacher that appreciates creative presentations and engaging students in novel ways will find value and success with ThingLink.

This project is a valuable teaching tool.

I love this app and what my student have been able to create with it. When they create their thinklink we have deeper conversations. I love how one item will lead into other aspects that have not yet been considered.

As with most digital tools, it's all in how you use it that determines how it affects the overall learning in your classroom. More teacher-centered uses of a tool tend to require lower-level thinking while student-centered activities require more higher-level thinking. The power with Thinglink comes from putting it into the students hands. What I like the most about Thinglink is the ease of use. It won't take any time for you or your students to create one and share. This allows you and your students to focus more on content and less on the technology. The free version of Thinglink is enough. If you don't have time to create your own Thinglink for your students, search the already-created ones because you will most likely find something that is perfect. If it's not, you can quickly edit it to suit your students' needs. I also like the fact that you can help students better understand a concept by including various and multiple representations of it (an article, a video, sounds, etc.) all to aid in deeper learning. With 360-degree images becoming so popular now, Thinglink now has the ability to upload those types of images that truly brings learning to life. Take students to places that they've never been with the use of this feature.

I really enjoyed introducing this product to the students. This program is a virtual mindmap for students to have a poster that has lots of information yet still looks clean. Applying this as an ongoing database to student learning could allow students to have a area where they collect a units knowledge and can always go back and revisit their notes. It also allows students to insert videos and images which could assist those ESL students that do not completely understand the language being taught in the classroom and link it to something to help them understand better.

I love the endless possibilities and potential with ThingLink. Kids love creating them, and it inspires great opportunities to talk about credible sources and public information.

My overall opinion is that students are very motivated to add the items which creates a positive learning environment. Individuals are so engaged that they learn more by researching the information they want to include. They also spend more time while creating their own the information to include beause the outcome is a project that they can't wait to share!

It is a good tool but it is hard to navigate for first users. I takes too much time to help the kids figure out how to use it and by the time they've got the hand of it there isn't much time left in our class period

This website features a gallery of projects that have been submitted by others and it allows me to create my own resources for my students. Students enjoy teaching one another with this too, too.

I like that thinglink offers many options to create, essentially, a hyper doc around a given topic. Thinglink could be used for book reports or any other report in other content areas. The only link we could not get to link in our projects were links to Google docs. Instead of having my 4th graders write their opinion pieces in a Google doc and linking it, they had to write the paragraph within a text box in thinglink. In terms of setting up a class account, one thing I found challenging was that I could assign my students accounts, but could only print out their log ins one time. I could not access log in info at a later date. Secondly, the accounts contained long user names and passwords that my 4th graders could not easily memorize. I love thinglink for individual projects since my students loved it. However, it proved challenging to set up a whole class to have user names and passwords.