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View the interactive image by Ben Totterdell

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Explore the best case studies and tutorials from SMEs, multinationals, universities, technical colleges, publishers, media, and educators!

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Getting started, ideas for all subject areas

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Getting started, ideas for all subject areas

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ThingLink is a tool for creating interactive images and videos by adding tags. Tags can link to websites, social media pages, videos, maps, images, and audio. Interactive Thinglink images can be shared on social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. There is an option to embed the Thinglink image on other websites as well.

Another feature that Thinglink offers is 360 degrees tours with tags. Users can upload 360 degrees pictures and add audio and video tags for a 3D virtual reality experience. This feature is only available with a Professional or Premium subscription.

Tool Snapshot

ThingLink Overview Video

ThingLink & the SAMR Model

Substitution: Interactive images can substitute linear PowerPoint presentations, educational videos, presentations, and posters.

Augmentation: Creating interactive images can improve the processes of searching and curating online content.

Modification: Pre-designed interactive images can be commented on, shared, and modified using the remix button.

Redefinition: Mixing different modes of text, audio, and video provides an innovative experience in the classroom.

Learning Activities

Thinglink can be especially useful for science, geography, history, language, and visual arts.

Science: Students can create an interactive image to develop or demonstrate their knowledge about a scientific concept or topic. Check out this example of the solar system:

Students can make their own vocabulary mind map and tag related words and images. Students can also annotate images of their favorite authors and texts. See Have you ever wanted to show your students a virtual tour to the Louvre? Better yet, your students can create one by tagging paintings to artist, times and movements. See an example English/Language Arts: an example in which the image links to the Edgar Allan Poe's birthplace, major works, and related websites.
Geography:Students can pinpoint names of places and landmarks. They can also include definitions or annotate historical facts on maps. here:

Arts:

How to Use ThingLink

Step 1 . Go to https://www.thinglink.com/

Step 2. Sign up by creating an account using an email or sign up using your Facebook, Twitter, or Google account.

Step 3. Explore or follow popular users or topics.

Step 4. Upload an image from your hard drive, the Internet, or Facebook.

Step 5. Select a position on the image and tag it to a website, video, or map.

Step 6. Share your interactive image on Facebook, Twitter, Gplus or obtain a code to embed it in your website.

Resources

More ideas for how to use ThingLink

*All images sourced from https://www.thinglink.com/

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ThingLink is a tool for creating interactive images and videos by adding tags. Tags can link to websites, social media pages, videos, maps, images, and audio. Interactive Thinglink images can be shared on social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. There is an option to embed the Thinglink image on other websites as well.

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Getting started, examples of virtual tours, how to document learning using technology and creating learning materials

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Getting started, examples of virtual tours, how to document learning using technology and creating learning materials

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View the interactive image by Louise Jones

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Examples of interactive learning resources in exhibitions

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Scottish design museum creates interactive learning resources that reflect the innovative, global and democratising themes in their recent exhibitions  Three years ago Scotland’s first design museum opened. ThingLink spoke to Chris Lewis and Julie Muir from V&A Dundee about how ThingLink changed the way that the museum creates their learning resources and has helped them increase accessibility in many different ways. “During lockdown, we asked ourselves – Should we be doing things differently? So we did what a design museum should be doing – which is redesigning to fit the situation that was going on – and ThingLink was part of that.” Julie Muir, V&A Dundee The V&A in London was founded in 1852 and is the world’s leading museum …  Read More

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Create professional templates. This example provides 10 different examples ranging from a Venn diagram, road map, office or newsletter.

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10 Business templates for creating interactive content with ThingLink and Canva

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Using ThingLink for your business? Great news: Our team has curated a collection of top 10 examples of ready-to-use Canva design templates that you can access for free! Whether you’re pitching a start-up, creating marketing and sales materials, communicating internally, or creating reports for decision-makers, interactive multimedia can help you say it better. Integrating Canva into ThingLink’s creation flow means that now it is even easier for ThingLink users to create professional-looking hypermedia experiences – not only for education teams but also for business, marketing and HR teams!

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View the interactive image by David Schouweiler

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Virtual recruitment event collaborating with over 40 industry partners

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Virtual recruitment event collaborating with over 40 industry partners

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Each organization has one interactive scene to introduce themselves, post open jobs and contact information #industrycollaborationVET

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View the interactive image by Social Studies Shared

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View the interactive video by 3GJyaPNxow 5ZO8fazf91

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A uthors: By Emma Gillaspy @egillaspy, Abhi Jones @AbhilashaJones, Gemma Spencer @gemmawhite84 and Julia Robinson @JuliaRobbo73 (UCLan)

Did you know that escape rooms are a growing phenomenon? They usually involve a group of people locked in a physical or virtual room, often based around a chosen theme. The overall aim is to escape from the room, but to achieve this they must work together solving puzzles and cracking codes. Recreational Escape rooms have been widely used as a fun and engaging way to learn through play (Zhang et al., 2018). We have adapted this playful concept to develop interpersonal skills and effective team working across health disciplines collaboratively for students and staff. Play is well known to improve cognitive development in both children and adults (Piaget 1962; Vygotsky 1962) and gamification fosters the relationship between fun, focus and learning outcomes (Tulloch 2014; van Gaalen et al., 2021). Our team developed several escape rooms, initially planned as face-to-face sessions, then BOOM! the pandemic hit. So, we got our thinking caps back on and quickly adapted them into online learning experiences for our healthcare students.

The results of these online escape rooms were amazing to watch. In our experience, they created a student-centred immersive learning environment to develop capabilities such as communication, leadership and teamworking. Plus, they are incredibly fun to facilitate too!

Our face-to-face and digital experiences consistently show positive feedback. For example, from a recent survey of students completing our interdisciplinary sepsis escape room, they rated the experience at 4.66/5 stars with 97% agreeing that it stimulated/challenged their thinking and would recommend it to other students. Students described the experience in their own words as exhilarating, fun, engaging, interactive and eye opening and asked for more sessions to be developed using this approach: "Overall a great, useful and educational experience! Would love to have more of these kinds of sessions!"

By now you must be thinking that's all very well but how do I actually create one of these for my students? Well we just so happened to have designed a puzzle so you can figure out the steps involved in creating your own escape room. Have a play and see what you think, would you do it in the same order as us? You might want to start by asking yourself what the session learning outcomes are, and how you can weave that into an engaging narrative.

But that's nowhere near enough detail for me to get started you say? Well strap in, here comes the techy bit... For our escape rooms, we used ThingLink, a dead easy online interactive image software, that allows the user to explore an image or video containing embedded information. You can use whatever images you like but our sepsis escape room used an insta360 camera (did you know you can loan this kind of kit from LIS?) connected to a mobile phone to take a 360-degree image of one of the simulation suites in the UCLan clinical skills lab. This image was then uploaded to ThingLink and the puzzles embedded into different hotspot types. Solved puzzles gave codes that opened virtual padlocks created using Flippity Scavenger Hunt. For the final code, we used a conditional tour tag to another ThingLink containing a 'congratulations you have escaped' image.

How do I go about creating the puzzles though? The best way to get your puzzling head on is to play a few recreational escape rooms which is sure to get your ideas flowing. Once you have some ideas, LearningApps is a great tool to create your puzzles but you can equally use cipher images, logic puzzles or riddles. Have a play to find out which puzzles would work for your escape room idea. You can also embed Microsoft or Google Forms as quizzes or evaluation. To embed office documents (PowerPoint, Word etc) from your UCLan OneDrive, follow this sharing demo. You can also embed documents easily via the Google suite.

Feel free to have a play around with any of these examples built using ThingLink:

Plus there are lots of other ways to develop educational escape rooms, see this recent AdvanceHE workshop by #creativeHE colleague @rachelleeobrien who uses OneNote for escape rooms. Or this example shared at a #creativeHE event of an induction escape room built using Articulate Rise.

We hope that reading this blog has whetted your appetite and you are considering ditching that lecture in favour of an escape room or other #playlearn approach. Feel free to contact any of us to talk escape rooms anytime! We have example facilitator guides and can work with you on your ideas to ensure playability. You can also find the recording and resources from our conference workshop here. Good luck play makers!

Piaget, J., (1962), Play, dreams and imitation in childhood, W. W. Norton & Company, New York

Tulloch, R. (2014). Reconceptualising gamification: Play and pedagogy. Digital Culture & Education, 6(4), 317-333

van Gaalen, A., Brouwer, J., Schönrock-Adema, J., Bouwkamp-Timmer, T., Jaarsma, A., & Georgiadis, J. R. (2021). Gamification of health professions education: a systematic review. Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice, 26(2), 683-711. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-020-10000-3

Vygotsky, L. S., (1962), Thought and Language, Wiley, New York

Zhang, X. C., Lee, H., Rodriguez, C., Rudner, J., Chan, T. M., & Papanagnou, D. (2018). Trapped as a Group, Escape as a Team: Applying Gamification to Incorporate Team-building Skills Through an 'Escape Room' Experience. Cureus, 10(3).

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Suffering from lecture lethargy? Break free and create an escape room

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A uthors: By Emma Gillaspy @egillaspy, Abhi Jones @AbhilashaJones, Gemma Spencer @gemmawhite84 and Julia Robinson @JuliaRobbo73 (UCLan) Did you know that escape rooms are a growing phenomenon? They usually involve a group of people locked in a physical or virtual room, often based around a chosen theme.

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Useful to see what a virtual tour looks like and the hotspots to use

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View the interactive image by Cline Library

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Medical school uses interactive media to recreate realistic emergency scenarios

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The medical school at the University of Central Lancashire uses real-life escape rooms to recreate typical time-critical emergencies for students. They used ThingLink to recreate the experience virtually and it proved to be a powerful tool for achieving learning outcomes, but also for improving teamwork.