Digital Me: ThingLink

For Dr. Smirnova's Social Studies Methods course, we had to create a Digital Me, also known as an about me project, using a form of technology from a list she provides the class.  For my project, I decided to use the program ThingLink.  Last semester my group had the opportunity to use ThingLink for our atmosphere presentation, which you can view here!

When we got to use ThingLink, I really enjoyed it.  It is a great program to use to annotate any image or video of your choice.  It is a more engaging and interactive way to present lessons to students in the classroom. However, ThingLink has stepped up its game by adding a  version of the program that is part of the premium account. Now, you can take a panorama photo and put it on the 360 version of ThingLink so then you can actually "move around" in the photo.

I am not going to lie, when I was initially putting my Digital Me together, I was having a hard time figuring out all the minor details in order to get the 360 version of ThingLink to work! Although, once I did it was really cool and totally worth it because my project came out really good! The photo I decided to use as my background is of Kauneonga Lake, which is the lake that I live near and grew up swimming in.  When I finished getting this project together, I was excited to share what I had created with my peers during my presentation. 

To view my Digital Me Project, click on this link!

As we present our projects in class, we have to do it in the form of a lesson so, it must include the three parts of a lesson: an introduction, development, and closure.  For my presentation I started off by introducing myself and the project that I created, I pre-assessed my peers on what they knew or did not  know about ThingLink, I went into all the details about me while I asked my peers to answer some questions about me and about their past experiences, I told them how ThingLink could be used in a classroom, and closed with comments and/or questions. 

I believe that ThingLink would be a great program to use in a class during a lesson to engage your students in a completely different way. While using this program you can take your students on a virtual tour of a time or place without leaving the classroom and actually feeling like you are there.  There are a lot of other features you can add to the project you create to make it work for the students in your classroom!