Education is shifting from reading textbooks in the classroom to active knowledge-building through any device with an internet connection. With ThingLink, students anywhere in the world can travel across distance and time to stunning 360° environments and create virtual tours of their own.
ThingLink was founded to enable hyperlinks in images, so that whenever a learner is browsing through photographs, maps, graphs or videos, they can simply click on anything they see to find out more. At its core, ThingLink is a tool to enable visual storytelling and add context to an image. This is done by using ThingLink’s image editor to link one thing (such as a person or an object in an image) to another (that provides additional information about the first thing).
Creating an interactive image with a group of students is one of the most efficient methods of building knowledge in the classroom. Students can use various forms of text, audio, video, photography and illustrations to show and share their learning. For example, students have documented plants and animals for a virtual nature path, created a culture tour to another school and documented a field trip to a historic landmark.
Students work together to produce background research, storylines and rich multimedia documentation, which increases both cognitive and emotional engagement with the subject of the study.
