Ways to Use Thinglink in Education

Visual literacy is an emphasis in ESOL. The visual aspect helps language learners develop vocabulary and much, much more.  It is also beneficial for many learners.  As an online instructor who wishes to bring more meaningful visuals into the classroom, I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for visuals for adult learners as well.  There are many online options available to us.

When Tech:  Thinglink Education is one option with a lot of potential.  The ThingLink Education site describes it as an “Easy-to-use editor, teachers can create immersive and engaging experiences by adding tags to any image in a few minutes: Create authentic, valuable, and rich interactive stories around historical events using media (video, sound, photos, written words, etc.) found online. Annotate graphs and timelines. Record an instructional message to students inside an image. Embed interactive images into student blogs. Enable students to curate content inside an image to demonstrate understanding of a topic."  

At ISTE, I received a free upgrade to the educator’s account of Thinglink Education, which took me from 50 pictures to 500.  

Met Ed: It may be no surprise that Pinterest is a great starting place to see the potential in education.  Explore the pictures at Thinglink Education on Pinterest. It will take you a few clicks to be able to interact with the picture in its intended way.  (Wave your cursor over the Thinglink and click on the circles.) I found this interesting one there by Mr. Loret’s World History class that demonstrates how students are using it!  Here's another Thinglink jumping place to gather ideas and examples.
 

 

Above is my first try with Thinglink. (Wave your cursor over the words, and click on the circles.) It’s very basic, but it shows me the potential firsthand.  I made this in Tagul and uploaded it to Thinglink.  I’ll use it to introduce a few options of online timelines my students can explore for an upcoming course.  It only took a few minutes to make.  I can imagine linking to videos I upload to You Tube or audio instructions I make on SoundCloud.  There are many possibilities.  With an assignment on theories of SLA, students could link to credible articles, videos, etc. that discuss and describe the theories.  Students could even have a “debate” starting place with the words “yes” and reasons on one picture and “no” and reasons on another.  They could then debate away, either by recording their voices and linking to Vacaroo or SoundCloud or simply by writing reasons on the picture and debating in person.  Thinglink has an option to invite others to work on a picture collaboratively.  There are a ton more possibilities, ways librarians, musicians, and others are using it too.  This Wired article gives an overview of a few.

Happy Thinglinking! 

You Are Your Words, Right?

The American Heritage Dictionary has a fun, simple site called You Are Your Words that allows you to create a self-portrait with your own words. Upload a picture or use your computer's camera to snap one, copy and paste something you write, and then share it by downloading it to your computer or sending it to Facebook or Twitter.  Be forewarned though that your creations may appear in the public gallery on the website.  I didn't see any statement saying this was a possibility, which brings up an important connection to the concept of digital footprints.   We need to have ongoing discussions with our students about this idea.

For fun, I uploaded a picture of my puppy and copy/pasted an upcoming post I wrote.  The picture on the left is the result.

Met Ed (application):  I see multiple benefits of integrating art into writing and the use of typography!

a.  I could have my adult students do this as an optional assignment.  I wouldn't require it due to the sharing feature on the gallery and could offer word clouds as an alternative. (See my earlier post about word clouds.)  It would be fun to have each student write an introduction on my online classes and then use it to create a word self-portrait to share.  

After creating these, powerful discussions could arise about the topic you are our own words.

b. The site seems to work okay with animals as well.  A class could write something about a class pet or animal they study and make a word portrait of it.  The concept of you are our own words could be extended to animal rights and asking questions surrounding giving voices to animals.

How could you use You Are Our Own Words site or the basic concept in your class?  Feel free to share if you have similar sites or apps that work for you.  I also use a similar free app called aTypoPicture-- Amazing Typographic Picture (a wordfoto).  

Happy creating!  (You know you love typography in education, even if you say you don't. Wait, you are your own words, right?)

Update: Aug 2012 A reader notified me that the site was not currently working.  I hope they get it functioning again.  It's a fun site.
 

 

Here are a few related previous posts:

Word Clouds: Tagxedo, Wordle, Tagul, and Wordlings 

Illuminated Text and Kinetic Typography Bringing Reading Alive

See, Feel, Hear, Touch, and Capture Vocabulary

Like so many of you, I’m always on the look-out for interesting ways of teaching vocabulary.  From math, to science, to English, etc.—each content area has vocabulary words that we introduce.    In the ESOL/Bilingual Ed courses I teach, we look at ways of integrating both the everyday language, which helps give our students a voice, as well as the academic language embedded in meaningful contexts that they need in academia.  How can we help our students see, hear, feel, touch, and maybe even smell or taste new words?  How can they record and share their learning?

Check out Shelly Terrell’s slide share.

Visualizing Vocabulary with Your Students

Shelly’s slide share is packed full of ideas, so I’m using it as a springboard for this post. 

• Some of these are tried and true no tech suggestions with examples like word walls (slide 7), which can also be done with online stickies like Linoit, Primary Wall, etc. 
• I’m off to look at the voicethread (slide 10) because I have used voicethread with vocabulary and beyond with success in the classroom and am really excited about the new voicethread app.
• Several of her suggestions such the word cloud Tagul (slide 12), Word Stash (slide 19-20), and Wordia (slides 21-24), I have blogged about and/or are found on our student’s tab.  There are also a lot of additional vocabulary games and sites on our student’s tab to explore. 
• Triptico (slide26) is a new one that I recently downloaded and am in the process of experimenting with.   It contains several useful tools like word magnets, what’s the question, and more assessable via your desktop.  It’s a fun way to involve the whole class in learning vocabulary.  Parts of it remind me of Classtools.net which I also use for vocabulary plus.
• Type in a sentence or story, and Flickr Poet  (slide 27)  produces it in picture form.

Scroll down through some related posts, videos, and examples I have made on vocabulary.  They include developing vocabulary with word clouds, online dictionaries and my vocabulary class Glogster.  In passing, I will mention that it amazes me how the sites I use continue to improve and many new vocabulary related sites continue to pop up.  For example, shortly after posting about Lexipedia, I discovered Visuwords.  Personally, I find all these sites worth exploring because they can be used for various purposes or with different age groups. 

Met Ed (Applications):  The sites within this post can be used alone within a lesson. They often work well with class discussion.  Many of them can also be used independently by students or as resources.  In addition, they can be used as a springboard for creating your own versions with the technology available to you or sometimes even with no tech.  For example, I love the videos on Wordia, but not all of the words my students need to search are found there.  I’d love to have my students take words from a unit of study and create their own picture gallery, videos or other type of media that we can then share with upcoming classes. 

Share your ideas (low tech or high tech), favorite sites, and experiences of teaching vocabulary either by commenting or emailing us.   How do you make vocabulary come alive?

*A thanks to Shelly Terrell for her slideshare and many amazing things she shares.  More to come in a future post about the many contributions Shelly makes to ed tech and my personal learning.

Illuminated Text and Kinetic Typography Bring Reading Alive

CLICK HERE ON THIS LINK. (Click here to watch the PowerPoint version.)  You won’t regret it! What you just watched (or should watch) is an illuminated text depiction by Jenny Lee of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, A Cat in the Rain.  Illuminated text is also sometimes referred to as kinetic typography.

There’s more where this came from. Watch THIS illuminated text using one of my favorite poets, e.e. cummins. Now, for the kicker.  Middle and high school students are making illuminated texts such as these.  Think of all the learning involved!  What a great alternative to demonstrate comprehension of a text.

Want to learn more?  The site AwaytoTeach is where to start.  It has examples, lesson plans, forums, and more.  Digital IS NWP National Writing Project has more examples and discussion as well.  Plus, it's a wonderful site to explore.

Every now and then, I find myself taken back to my roots as an English major, drawn to the classics.  The sites AwaytoTeach and Digital IS NWP National Writing Project  took me back, and I’m glad they did in a way that adds a simple twist to the greats!  Illuminated text such as these also connect to the quick and effective word clouds in my previous post.  I can see using this concept in many different content areas.  How could you use it?

Here is one called Language I show in one of my university classes when discussing standard English. Take a look at Typolution; the idea of raining punctuation captivates me-- who wouldn't want to catch an exclamation mark or splash in a comma? Partners could watch and describe it as part of a language development activity.  Below is a a typography based on a classic, Who's on First.  It made me think it would be fun for ELLs to create one of these based on a Jazz Chant.

“This is crazy awesome,” she said. “Go explore more!”

Word Clouds: Tagxedo, Wordle, Tagul, and Wordlings

Online word clouds and Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs fit perfectly into my beginning ESOL unit on food. (Mmm, hmmm… not only does that bring back memories of one of my favorite classes, but it also makes me hungry.)  My students took unit vocabulary and created word cloud word wall art with it.  That was the first time I used word clouds, and I haven't looked back since then.

Word clouds are simple to do, but effective.  In the most basic sense, they involve taking text or a URL  address, running it through a word cloud site, and magically beholding beautiful word art that makes the most frequently used words pop.  They can typically be linked to, embedded in a blog or site, and displayed in a gallery. The apple on the upper right hand corner of this site is an example of a word cloud made on Tagxedo.  Wave your cursor over the words to watch them enlarge.  Go ahead.  It’s fun.

So, how can word clouds fit into the classroom? Student use. Teacher use.  Brainstorming.  Previewing vocabulary.   Analyzing your own writing, blog or website.  A comparison of the “K” and the “L” in a KWL (Know, Want to Know, Learned).   The list goes on and on.  Check out some ideas and contribute your own to the LinoIt online sticky embedded below.  (It is easiest to view and add to it HERE. Create a new sticky note.  Use the hand to drag your sticky to a new place.)

Here are a few sites that generate word clouds: Tagxedo, Wordle, Tagul, and Wordlings.  I listed Tagxedo and Wordle first because they are the two I use the most frequently.  I particularly like Tagxedo because of all of the shape options it offers.

This Teacher Challenge blog post gives an overview of Wordle and some good example of how to use it. Here is a Google docs that gives 50 interesting ways to use Wordle in the classroom.   This slideshare gives 101 suggestions for using Tagxedo.  Here is a slideshare that shows how to use Tagul and describes some of its uses.


On the left is a Tagul word cloud I made using this blog. On the right is a Wordlings word cloud I made with this blog. 

 Go creative-crazy.  Happy creating!

Vocabulary Class Takes to 21st Century Learning Tools

This is a follow up to my previous post entitled Glogster EDU My Grasshopper Mocha.  In searching for some creative ways to teach and learn vocabulary, I decided to use Glogster EDU for a springboard and platform, add a few other web 2.0 tools and vocabulary sites, and see where it took my adult ESOL class in three weeks.  In the process, we used Pic Lits, Jing, Youblisher, Wall Wisher, and Tagxedo.  Here’s where beginning to advanced level language learners landed in a few class periods when they brought their laptops to class.  Click here for full view. (See below for explanations of how we incorporated each of these tools)

Jing :  Inspired by Daniel Pink’s videos that encourage people to ask the question “What’s my sentence?” when thinking about intrinsic motivators, I created my own video recording of my sentence.  I stated what impact I hope to have in the world and my related vocabulary as an example for my students.    (Here’s a direct link to my video created with Jing, an easy to use screen capturing tool for both images and videos.)

Pic Lits and Jing:  (See previous post here for more on Pic Lits) Assignment 1.  With limited time, Pic Lits’ library of pictures and words served our purposes.  Students were encouraged to use pseudonyms for usernames.  We spent a few class periods finding pictures, working on vocabulary development, and editing.  They emailed me their links and within a matter of minutes, this Student Pic Lits Glogster came to life.  Assignment 2.  After students got the hang of Pic Lits, they created their own sentences demonstrating what impact they hope to leave and their related vocabulary.  They used a variety of online dictionaries such as Lexipedia in a round robin synonym/antonym vocabulary building activity to give each other additional vocabulary suggestions.  Optional assignment 3.  A few students decided to take it a step further.  With 15 minutes in-class time and my laptop, they snapped pictures of their Pic Lit sentences and recorded this video using Jing.  Watch their video here!  It was fun listening to them self correct pronunciation, peer edit, etc. as they recorded.

Youblisher, Jing, and Tagxedo:  I wanted to give Youblisher a try, so I took snapshots of each of the student sentences using Jing.  I compiled them in a PDF file and within a matter of seconds published their sentences in this online book. (Click on the bottom right to flip the pages.)  We also compiled our favorite words into a Tagxedo picture and added it to the Youblisher book.

Wallwisher:  We used wallwisher on a limited basis.  We added our textbook’s vocabulary to a wall, and weekly words that students taught to the class from their vocabulary journals.  Some students took the optional challenge and wrote sentences using the vocabulary words.  There are many possibilities with Wallwisher or another similar tool such as LinoIt. 

Online dictionaries and games:  We rounded off the class with partners exploring and then presenting assigned online dictionary and vocabulary games to the class.  Here’s a link to some online vocabulary student sites for various language levels.

Jing, PicLits, Youblisher, Wallwisher, Tagxedo:  Any of these can serve as standalone tools within the classroom.  However, publishing them on a platform such as Glogster EDU creates a buzz of excitement and a place to collaborate and share work.  A big thank you is in order to my students who put in the effort and worked on this project in a short amount of time and granted me permission to share it!  Here’s one last look at the final project’s home page.

Drop us a line if you want to share an experience with any of these tools in the classroom.  Happy Glogging!