Thinglink in your Future: Step Four

This new tool, Thinglink has created interest in education and technology blogs alike. We read about Valenza's experience "...annotating and enriching (a poster) with presentations, documents, and media from school library programs all over the country."  
Van Grove (2011) presents Thinglink on the Mashable site. "Thinglink changes how people interact with photos by transforming them into a navigational surface for search, commerce, and social connection."  It's tagging allows users to create new experiences for viewers of their image by simple addition of links to a variety of media.

Thinglink is easily added to blogs and web pages. It links sound, video, social networks, and web pages to digital images. The possibilities for professional use and for uses in the classroom are limitless. Baumbach lists 21 + Interesting uses for Thinglink in a Google doc presentation and illustrates some uses on auntytechideas . |I can't wait to introduce Thinglink to my colleagues and my students. 

The only concern I can see is the use of Thinglink in school boards where internet filters block personal websites and blog hosting sites as the tool must be embedded on a web page or blog.

Thinglink in Action: Step Three

Hover over the tag and click Thinglink markers to access links.
Note:If using Google reader please connect to this page to view tags.

Thinking about Thinglink: Step One

Interactivity in a "digital medium create a set of possibilities that did not exist before, facilitating a type of active student learning with public, visual, and kinesthetic properties that cross the boundaries of multiple intelligences. " (Schrand, 2008, p.83)  

I was interested to explore an alternate to flickr image notes and read in Free Technology for Teachers,   "Thinglink is a neat service that allows you to make any image on your blog an interactive image." Including interactivity in images will engage learners and encourage creativity in demonstration of their learning.
 

For my visually oriented self, Thinglink offers "to embed not just text links to pictures but also audio, video, images and other material brought in directly from other sites.” (Johnson, 2011, para.3) When a reader hovers over a tag they will have access to a link to much more than text. The reader can link to text, to Wikipedia, sound recordings, websites, Facebook, and to iTunes, YouTube or Twitter.

The Innovative Educator wrote about Thinglink,  "Well this is pretty cool." and I agree!