Community reviews for ThingLink

I think it is engaging for visual learners and is very portable and can be embedded in an LMS like Schoology. I like that you can use any image and then link to outside information.

ThingLink has a lot of potential, but like any ed tech tool, successful integration is dependent upon matching the tool to content and learning goals, as well as being cognizant of the tool's strengths and weaknesses. Recommended with caution.

I would definitely recommend using this app. Students are engaged when using it and spend a lot of time finding the perfect links to add to their photos.

It is a great teacher tool and student tool! I would definitely use it as a teacher tool first so that kids can navigate through it without any issues before having them make their own thinglink. I would love to have a video to show the kids about what all the features include. This would ignite their creativity!

This product works well as both a teaching and learning tool. Teachers can create a thinglink related to the topic and use as an introduction to a lesson to contextualize and familiarize learners with the content.

Overall, this is a useful tool if you can encourage higher level thinking. Many of the most popular Thinglinks are about celebrities and pop culture. Make sure you show students some examples of the quality you expect from their product. Students enjoy creating their Thinglinks, and they will probably create their own once you have demonstrated the tool. It does not teach the research process though; that is still up to the teacher.

What's your overall opinion about this product as a teaching tool? What did you like? How could it serve kids and/or your teaching better? Please be specific and don't shy away from constructive critique. I loved using this tool in my classroom. I teach students to analyze primary source documents, and Thinglink allowed my students to analyze documents digitally, layering more content onto the image. By the end of the lesson, students were more knowledgeable of the content of their amendment than they would have been had I taught the whole class. My critique is the ease of access to the Thinglink website. Setting up a teacher account, adding students, and creating a channel were not intuitive. I had to speak to Thinglink tech support multiple times before I was able to see my students’ accounts and they were able to see my own account. Also, Thinglink generates a student username and password. These consist of a complicated collection of characters that were difficult for students to enter to their login. Don’t forget to save these usernames and passwords because Thinglink deletes them immediately afterwards. As a 5th grade teacher, I am quite familiar students forgetting or losing their usernames and passwords. If it weren’t for me saving these into a text document, I would be in a very difficult place. Students can change their username and password; however, again, this is not intuitive. Great tool, but the website needs to be more user-friendly for both students and teachers.

I love this tool and recommend it to the teachers I support. The kids enjoy using it and pick up how to use it very easily so they can focus on the content they're presenting rather than the tool itself.

I think that thinglink is a great multimedia tool for all ages. It is easy-to-use, motivating, and it allows students and teachers to reach the "modification" level on the SAMR model while focusing on content.

Thinglink has made great strides (both as an app, and as a website) to meet the needs of educators. This app provides students with a quick and easy way to tag and make two-dimensional, non-interactive photos more interactive. By tagging images, students can demonstrate understanding, provide links/URLs to supplemental videos or websites and truly create depth to what might otherwise be basic content. Although the app is useful, I really like the online Thinglink tool better. The app and website DO interact and talk to one another so work created on the iPad will show on your online Thinglink account, but the online web-based tool allows teachers to create .edu accounts and build classes of students with their own log-ins.