Presentations without PowerPoint: Thinglink

For years, PowerPoint has been the go to program for making presentations, but, there are many other programs out there that can be used to make presentations, Thinglink is one of them. I decided to build a virtual library with Thinglink and identify all of my genre sections and share what sort of materials are there.

A colleague shared that her teachers are using Thinglink to do interactive presentations about Historical events.  Thinglink lets you embed video, text and more images.  It's accessible by a simple click of a button. The educational version, which is free, actually lets teachers establish groups and add students so kids work is within the teacher's channel.  What a fantastic opportunity to change up your presentations.

Imagine this:   A teacher does a PowerPoint to present a specific topic.  On that PowerPoint, there is a video, some text, some images and a timeline.  Wouldn't it be awesome to embed a Thinglink into your website that contains the same information and let students refer to that?  You can even embed a worksheet or a project into the actual image.

I can see Thinglink being used for all sorts of projects- There is so much that can be done with it. The images you see here are the featured links of the day.

Alternatives to PowerPoint pt. 4

As you have seen, my focus of late has been PowerPoint alternatives and ways to do similar or better things for free.  A few weeks back, I did a post about a site called Thinglink that I think fits this topic perfectly.  I decided to again write about it and offer some potential ideas, mainly because I attended a conference last week and the Thinglink chat was all the rage.  I saw teachers and students using it in action and that, to me was a home run.

Thinglink, as we talked about before, allows a visual object to become ultra dimensional.  It allows for embedded text, links, and video.  Teachers have been using it as an alternative to PowerPoint.  In one class I visited, the teacher had kids research a topic related to the era in the novel they were reading.  Each student had to be responsible for finding and linking the information to the visual.  Because it has direct links, embedded tools, etc, the actual citation information is also included right into the document.  Yes, it makes MLA not really the citation tool of choice, but, it is requiring kids to use critical thinking and research skills to find the best information for their topic.

I am going to use it as a tool in my French class this year.  Each student will be assigned a specific vocabulary topic and will be required to create a thinglink that has the words somehow included.  I am guessing they can even embed audio!  I am so excited to play around with this tool.  I think the kids will appreciate something different than the norm for a project, as well.

Here are a few ideas I saw for using thinglink:
1) Research of a topic in class and use the thinglink to expand the information.
2) Vocabulary thinglinks.
3) Student centered flip: Have the students develop some of the lesson and use a thinglink to present it to the class.
4) US Geography (Or any continent, country, etc.).  Assign students (lower grades) a state and have them use a thinglink to map out whatever they can about it. Older kids can get a nation and go through it's historical changes, or take a continent and identify the different places, how they have changed, etc.
5) Battleground activity: Select a war, identify a battle site (Bighorn, Gettyburg, etc) and have the students create a thinglink that covers the topic.

The list can go on and on....

Using Thinglink

Even though I wasn't able to attend the MACUL (Michigan Association of Computer Educators) Conference back in March, I did attend virtually via twitter.  I followed a lot of commentary from those there about a site called Thinglink that was being presented.  I had already seen a little about the site, but I decided I would spend a little time investigating it and trying to use it.   As soon as I got there, the ideas started popping.  Light bulbs were going off in my head and I was inspired.  I could envision making my library visually digital (if that is a term that works).

Thinglink takes images and allows you to place access to links, video, text, whatever right on the photo.  It makes your photo interactive. How cool is that?

I have decided my summer mission is to make several of these interactive images to train my students how to use the library and how to locate books.  Right now, we have several categories in the catalog and several different locations, but they are all amuck.  It's hard to know where to find everything. My hope is if I make the library interactive and place it on the website- kids can see the points and know where it all is.

I started trying it just to see how it worked.  It was fast and simple.  It took very little time to add links and type a little text.  I linked a lot to my dropbox.  I am thinking I could also use this in my French class as a potential PBL activity.  Kids could take an image and link to some points of interest and write some text in French. It may turn out to be a fun activity for the kids and for me.