Thinglink is an easy to learn tool for demonstrating knowledge or engaging students in learning
Community Review for ThingLink
My Take
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.
How I Use It
My 5th and 6th grade students have created Thinglinks about topics they researched for their history classes. Students were required to plan their research process, evaluate websites, locate similar information on multiple pages, and then summarize what they learned using Thinglink. The only problem we had was that many students chose small, poor quality images to use in the background. It created an opportunity to discuss some of Google images search features so next year that will be a part of the introduction and discussion.