The industry expert judges were impressed by ThingLink’s evidence-backed submission. It demonstrated that ThingLink is not only a trusted solution but has also evolved with emerging technology, guiding their customers to develop impactful training experiences.

“We’re thrilled for this honor and the recognition of the bridge we built from the 2D internet to the Metaverse with the easiest suite of immersive eLearning and content creation tools available for businesses, brands, and educational institutions.”

Ulla-Maaria Koivula ThingLink Founder & CEO

ThingLink – Top XR Firm

XR or Extended Reality is the perfect term to conceptualize what ThingLink is and offers. A fast and easy way to create Interactive and immersive learning experiences that can be delivered in highly impactful ways, and accessible on any device. Whether in-person or in synthetic spaces, on-site or off-site, ThingLink provides the tools to enable organizations to tailor content for every training scenario.

Customers consistently express their trust and confidence in ThingLink’s ability to enable them to deliver impactful training.

The platform has notably transformed education and elearning by reshaping how learning and training is created and consumed. ThingLink has made it incredibly easy for everyone and anyone to do this, from creating 360 photospheres of environments to creating real world contexts for scenario based learning with interactive content.

Think you know ThingLink? Think Again!

ThingLink’s Suite of Products in 2023 includes essential features for creating impactful employee training and essential assets for processes and information. 

1. Advanced Multimedia Editor for adding interactive hotspots with layers of information on your images, videos, 360 media and 3D objects. 
2. ThingLink Scenario Builder for creating branching scenario based learning experience, perfect for decision making in high risk situations, includes learner data and analytics. 
3. New! Guided Tours, for creating virtual tours with single click with built-in narration. 
4. New! Augmented Reality AR App for an in-person onsite experience to gain essential information by overlaying info on machinery or objects.
5. Panoramic Images to 360 Photospheres converter, enabling anyone to create 360 images with their mobile device.
6. AI Assistant Tools Via text prompts in the ThingLink Editor or through our 360 image generator with Skybox AI partnership

Three Essential Resources

• Build Scenario Based Learning and Training with ThingLink’s New Templates
• Create Powerful Moments of Insight: A Masterclass in Creating Immersive Scenario Based Learning Experiences
• How to Create Immersive Online Employee Training in 5 Days Using AI

Looking for more training and elearning inspiration?

For more inspiration, make sure you’re following us on social media. In particular, please do join our LinkedIn Community.

The future of immersive learning is not just about consuming content—it’s about creating it. Finding a school or team-friendly yet powerful solution for creating with AI can be challenging. Enter ThingLink’s integration with Skybox AI. Here’s why educators and students alike are raving about this dynamic duo, here’s some helpful ideas to making the most of it!

About Blockade Labs Skybox AI

Blockade Labs specializes in AI-assisted 360-degree image generation technology. With Skybox AI, Blockade Labs aims to make the world of 360-degree imaging more dynamic, interactive, and accessible to all using simple text prompts.

10 Key Pointers for Skybox AI 360 Generation Prompts

1. Keep it simple for effective results.
2. 3-4 phrase prompts are ideal; too long can override style.
3. If prompts are too short, they may lack coherence; add descriptive phrases.
4. Specify location context: “indoors” or “outdoors”.
5. Adjust camera altitude with tags like “aerial view” or “street view”.
6. For night time scenes, use words like “moonlit” or “bioluminescent”.
7. Emphasize context in prompts.
8. Clean up messy images using negative prompts with words like “blurry” or “broken”. (Negative prompts available only in SkyBox AI Interface currently)
9. Explore presets for cleaner images,
10. For sky presets, describe clouds and aim for flat horizons.

Even Better with Enhanced Prompts!

Using Enhanced Prompts is now available in the ThingLink Create with Sky Box Interface. Here’s an example with Enhanced Prompts

Helpful Tip for Teachers! Learners can copy paste the Enhanced Prompts into a ThingLink Info Tag to create vocabulary lists and further research. Original prompt simply ‘George Orwell 1984’. Enhanced Prompt – VR360: Ominous Big Brother billboards, giant telescreens in dystopian cityscape. Style: gritty realism, industrial bleakness, high-contrast light. VR360: Dead trees, gloomy skyscape, towering brutalist architecture.

Another Helpful Tip for Teachers – View in VR! Imagine learners and educators being able to create 360 worlds and view with your VR Headsets.

Click to download the PDF.

Common tips and tricks to getting the most out of your Skybox AI generations!

More Ideas to Follow

Join our ThingLink and Skybox webinar or watch the replay! Sign up here We’ll be collating ideas for games based learning, storytelling and sharing all!

Connect and Collaborate

For more ideas, use cases and inspiration on content creation, join our communities on social media! Twitter / X ThingLink Education and Blockade Labs Skybox AI LinkedIn Community and ThingLink Education Facebook Group. Discord Blockade Labs Community.

Now On-Demand

Sign Up for the Replay and Resources

Registration

In the world of eLearning, branching scenarios have emerged as a powerful tool to amplify employee engagement and real-world decision-making skills. By allowing learners to “pick their own path”, these scenarios mirror complex situations, making learning deeper and more memorable. Dive in with us to discover how the ThingLink Scenario Builder can be your secret weapon in designing these transformative learning experiences.

The Magic of Branching

Ever reminisced about those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books? Branching scenarios function similarly. Learners are presented with situations and make choices, with each decision leading them down a unique path. This interactive method boosts decision-making skills, critical thinking, and retention.

ThingLink Scenario Builder: Branching Made Easy

Navigating the terrain of branching might seem complex, but with the ThingLink Scenario Builder, it’s as intuitive as it gets. Its user-friendly interface supports the creation of intricate paths, ensuring that each learner’s experience is tailored and impactful.

Couldn’t join us?

Sign up anyway and we’ll make sure you receive a link to the action replay!

Check out this sample branching scenario!

By the end of this masterclass, participants will be able to:

• Grasp Branching Fundamentals: Understand the underlying principles and benefits of branching, or “pick your own path”, learning experiences.
• Navigate ThingLink with Confidence: Identify and utilize the primary features of ThingLink’s Scenario Builder, especially those that facilitate branching scenarios.
• Design Engaging Branching Scenarios: Apply best practices to generate context-based learning modules with multiple decision points using ThingLink.
• Incorporate Multimedia Elements Seamlessly: Embed 360 degree media, videos, images, and other multimedia components to support and enhance the branching experiences.
• Evaluate and Iterate Branching Modules: Gather feedback on their branching scenarios, analyze learner paths, and refine for maximum engagement and effectiveness.
  Integrate into LMS: Ensure smooth integration of ThingLink branching scenarios into various Learning Management Systems (LMS).

Other Ideas for learning about ThingLink you’ll love!

• Free ThingLink Certified Creator Course
• Previous ThingLink On Demand Webinars
• Search Support Articles or Request Support

Connect and Collaborate

For more ideas, use cases and inspiration on content creation, join our communities on social media! LinkedIn Community, Twitter Creative Learning Design Community and ThingLink Education Facebook Group.

Manel Rives is an educator based in the Spanish city of Vigo in Spain’s Galicia region. As well as being a Primary School Teacher, he is an Apple Distinguished Educator, an Apple Professional Learning specialist,  and a LinkedIn Learning Author. Over the academic year 2022-23, Manel has managed a project across 25 different primary and secondary schools and universities: I Deserve a Street in VR. Within the schools, groups of students worked together to present the cases for a number of streets in their own city or town to be re-named after a woman of their choice. This could be someone who for one reason or another had been overlooked in the past and whose story had been forgotten. 

The inspiration for the virtual guides

The idea behind “I deserve a street!” came from fellow educator Rosa Liarte, who had previously developed such a project with her own students and other schools. In this original version, students researched women who they believed deserved to be recognized and memorialized with a street being re-named after them in their home town, and then wrote to the town authorities with their research collated into a final presentation. 

However, Manel saw the potential for the material to be created and presented in a digital and interactive format, potentially using the format of 360 images with embedded multimedia content created by pupils, to create more of a virtual reality experience. The students could carry out independent research, and work together to create a persuasive argument to present to the city authorities. Why not also include images or videos of the street in question too, perhaps with the students even presenting the content in situ, in the street itself?

In fact Manel had previously developed such an interactive project for his students to create together: CreaRVigo. From 2015 onwards, groups of 8-9 year old students have been presenting different sites and points of interest in Vigo by creating virtual site visits in ThingLink. They add images, videos and voiceovers to introduce and explain the context and sites – acting as virtual tour guides to their own familiar city.

Explore on of the ThingLinks below!

What do you need to create virtual tours and presentations like these?

For the project to work well, Manel knew he had to provide students with the perfect combination of robust hardware and easy to use content creation platforms. It was important that they were able to author the work independently IT specialists GoldenMac EDU Grupo K-Tuin provided all-in-one suitcases, each containing an iPad, as well as a Ricoh Theta 360 camera so that the students could easily capture 360 images and video of the streets they had chosen. They also contained a 4G router to connect camera and iPad in case any school didn’t have such capability themselves.  

Each iPad was ready-loaded with content creation apps including Garageband for audio, iMovie for video, Photos to store the content and photo retouching, and ThingLink for the final assembly. ThingLink also provided Manel with an organizational account to include all the seats he required across the 25 centres.

Manel created his own set of video tutorials which he uploaded to each of the iPads, showing the students how they could create the final 360 content. 

“(I needed) tremendously powerful devices, as well as software platforms that are extremely simple to use. For the final content, ThingLink was the answer that did it all!”. 

Manel Rives

Results of the project

In providing all the physical and online tools, as well as thorough guidance in how to use them, the students were able to create wonderfully engaging and immersive content. It places their research directly into context for viewers –  in what Manel describes perfectly as “an immersive canvas”. 

Manel has been invited to talk about the success of the project at the 2023 Apple Professional Learning Summit. 

Benefits of the project for the students

Manel is a firm proponent of “learning by doing” and considers both the virtual city guides and the “I Deserve a Street!” project as an ideal channel to combine and develop a multitude of skills that are essential for young people in the 21st century. These include: 

• Research skills
• Creative and presentation skills
  • Learning how to use verbal and non verbal language such as body language, in combination with the written word and images to develop a convincing argument. 
  • Using reasoning and argument to present your case in a compelling and convincing way.
  • Considering how you can present the content in different languages and modes to make it accessible for all.
• Technology skills – recording, editing, uploading and combining content in a range of multimedia formats.
• Teamwork, social and collaboration skills to create the virtual experience as a joint enterprise – some of the soft skills they will need in the future in a modern society.
• Teaching skills: students can use their final content to teach each other; they can be reviewers of each other’s work and give constructive feedback.

“Students also have the opportunity to obtain better results by using these techniques to develop processes. This is because multimedia materials help students understand the content more deeply, offering a variety of useful resources for their learning. This includes videos, interactive graphics, multimedia presentations, photographs, animations, music and audio.”

Manel Rives

Alternative possibilities to widen access to this sort of content creation

The packaging and delivery of all the tools required in a ready-made pack is the ideal way to provide schools and students with all they need to create their own similar interactive content! However here are some other alternatives if this is not a possibility for your school:

• If students have limited access to 360 devices, they can take a panoramic photo on any mobile device, then upload and convert for free with the new ThingLink Pano to 360 app. It’s completely free and no ThingLink account is required!
• They could also use the free ThingLink 360 image library to create an online tour of famous sites around the world. Choose from high-quality scenes from national parks, heritage sites, capital cities and more! 
• Make use of the free tutorials available on the ThingLink YouTube channel, as well as ThingLink support pages, to demonstrate to students how to create their first ThingLink.
• Make sure you join the Facebook Education Group to meet and be inspired by fellow educators!

Next steps for the project 

Manel hopes to continue the project as more students from more education centers create more interactive guides and content.

Further reading

You may also be interested in:

• Hungarian students create their own joint virtual exhibition
• What is Project-Based Learning in the Classroom
• Explore this example from Finland where students created their own virtual art exhibition

Online learning and remote learning have been widely adopted practices in higher education, but there is less experience and research of how they work in basic education. This article focuses on the use, potential benefits, and best practices of interactive visual media in online education and remote learning. We will discuss:

1. What are the main arguments for interactive visual media in online learning?
2. What are some examples and best practices for creating visual learning materials for students?
3. How can students use interactive visual media for documenting and sharing their learning?

Quick links:

1. Interactive visual media in online education
2. Examples of interactive learning materials
3. Examples and best practices for creating remote learning materials for students
4. Supporting student-centered learning with interactive visual media
5. Best practices for developing students’ creativity and digital storytelling skills at home
6. How to get started with using interactive visual media in my school district? Do I need to involve the principal or the superintendent?

Interactive visual media in online education

Interactive images, videos, and virtual tours can support online learning by providing an alternative to text-based communication. Here are three arguments for why this is the case.

Humans remember pictures better than words (the “picture superiority effect”) One explanation to this is Allan Paivio’s dual-coding theory from 1971. According to this theory, if we see an image of a banana, our mind stores this stimulus (‘banana”) both as the word ‘banana’ as well as the image of a banana. This ‘dual coding’ increases the chance of remembering the banana better compared to if the stimulus was only coded in our mind as the word.

Multisensory experience triggers simultaneous associations. Pictures, sounds, and words together with a contextual experience of a place can create memorable learning experiences more efficiently than plain images or written words alone that are not associated with anything real. That’s because a simultaneous visual/auditory/verbal stimulus automatically connects our minds with multiple associations about the world. This could be a previous experience or a personal memory that associates with the new word or concept in our minds. While multisensory learning materials (including interacting with images by touching them) help most learners, they are especially helpful for dyslexic or autistic students. Seeing a new word written under a picture and hearing how it is pronounced, helps us understand and remember what we are looking at.

Virtual tours expand our fields of perception from physical to digital. Whereas previously, learning in a real-world context was limited to a student’s physical environment (and maybe the school’s and parents’ travel budget), 360 images and videos are making it possible to travel anywhere virtually. We can remember and learn on a virtual field trip the same way as we learn on a physical field trip. For example, last summer I went to Machu Picchu in a mixed reality headset, but my memory tells me I was there for real. If I went there again, I would recognize the place.

Examples of interactive learning materials

Creating online learning materials, lessons, and assignments does not have to be difficult, time-consuming, or expensive. Interactive videos, audio posters, narrated screenshots, and virtual tours can be effective tools for online education that help educators and learners work together using not only text-based communication, but also voice, video, and images.

Narrated photos, audio posters and screenshots

Working from home or other remote locations requires extra effort in sharing thoughts and progress with others. Hearing the educator repeat instructions for an assignment is important for many students.

A great way for giving assignments or sharing projects is adding voice instructions to various areas of a photo, poster or a screenshot. Whether this is a math assignment or a wireframe of a UI design, short audio notes from a familiar voice can improve comprehension and make an otherwise abstract visualization or assignment feel more meaningful and personal. For educators, recording audio instructions directly to images means saving time on repeating instructions over email.

Interactive videos

Interactive videos can be used for various purposes: interviews, presentations, introductions, explanations, lectures, training and project assignments. Even a short 5-minute video to explain daily goals or project assignments helps learners stay connected with their teacher instead of just receiving text-based instructions via an LMS.

What should I take into account when planning a video lesson?

Equipment: The good news is, you only need your phone or laptop, so there is no need to invest in additional hardware unless you want to.

Setup: A video lesson can be very similar to your lesson in the classroom. You can use a whiteboard, move around, or address students face-to-face sitting in front of your laptop. As much as being a resource for students, think of this video as a resource for yourself; students can replay it as they prepare for a test, or you can share it with absent students who missed your class.

Recording: Find a place with natural light where you feel comfortable, and start recording. The audience is your students so picture them in front of you, and address them as you would in the class. You may even mention some of them by name to keep their attention!

Duration: Our recommendation is you look at the lesson as a whole and divide it into parts, max 10-15 minutes and ideally 6 minutes each. This makes it easier for students to stay engaged and for you to follow their progress. Similar to YouTube, uploading long videos to ThingLink takes some minutes even with strong wifi connection, so make sure you are in a good wifi spot.

Upload specifications:

• Supported file formats: MP4
• Max Video resolution: 3840 x 1920
• Max File size: 2 GB
• Codecs: H264 video codec and AAC audio codec

Virtual tours

Virtual reality lessons and tours have become more common in classroom learning, but how can they be used in distance education?

From a hardware point of view, it is worth noting first that viewing virtual lessons using virtual reality headsets is not a commonly applicable solution for county public schools or city schools because of the simple fact that most families do not have headsets at home. For this reason, when we talk about virtual tours or virtual learning environments in distance learning, we most often refer to 360-degree image or video viewing on mobile devices and desktop.

The first challenge schools or principals and teachers face is lack of virtual lessons that would be aligned with national Common Core or state standards, but still adjustable for individual classrooms. Should educational publishers provide this content to schools or should teachers in every school start building virtual lessons themselves? To answer the question, let’s first take a closer look at the potential teacher-student connection that virtual tours could support in basic and secondary education.

When Google launched Expeditions in 2015, ThingLink team started getting two kinds of emails from teachers. Most wanted to know if we could support 360 image annotation so that teachers could create their own expeditions and tours together with students. The second question concerned the ability to guide the tour to make sure students would pay attention to things that were relevant for the lesson. This one was tricky, because we did not believe in replicating the traditional classroom experience in VR by setting up twenty-five headsets for a shared VR lesson.

Observing elementary or secondary school students viewing a virtual tour, three things seemed to be true: 1) Students benefit from expert guidance: it helps them pay attention to relevant things, 2) Some students need more repetition than others: it should be possible for students to revisit a tour, and 3) Everybody is different: asynchronous viewing can support personalized learning experiences better than synchronous viewing.

The promise of virtual tours in remote learning is to increase teachers’ online instructional time without putting in more hours. This can be done by recording the teacher’s talk, explanations, or instructions to a virtual tour. In this manner students can virtually visit remote places at their own pace and time, but do so in the presence of their own — or another — teacher. The experience would still be shared with fellow students, but viewing would happen asynchronously.

Could a large educational publisher do this? They could definitely provide a course catalog and lesson templates, but in a situation where students are learning from home, it becomes challenging to apply the flipped classroom model with blended online and offline learning strategies. In this situation maintaining a daily connection with students becomes one of the most important aspects to consider. Online students need a whole new learning system. Part of this system is the learning materials we provide to students, and the strategies we use to create them.

Hotspots: what are they and how do they work?

The purpose of the clickable hotspots or tags is to give the viewer further information and resources on the topic they are learning about. Teachers and students can add various types of content in the hotspots, such as text, additional closeup images, video, sound, links and embedded web content such as maps or forms. These resources can serve any of the following functions:

1. Building perspective by linking to related materials
2. Improving comprehension of the topic by highlighting key concepts and vocabulary
3. Zooming into details in a scene
4. Creating a feedback loop by including a call to action

In order to create a engaging and effective learning materials, one does not necessarily need to use all the different tag types in one asset, but it’s good to keep these questions in mind when planning new content:

1. What other materials or discussions does this learning asset relate to?
2. What are the key concepts and academic/professional vocabulary I want my viewers to master?
3. Are there any specific details that I want to highlight?
4. What is the call-to-action I want to link to this learning asset?

Building perspective by linking to related materials

The purpose of this resource is to connect your image or video to related materials, may that be other videos or articles on the subject, a summary of the lesson, or a snapshot of the learning goals. The resource itself may be a link to another website, an embedded video, slideshow or a map.

Improving comprehension by highlighting key concepts and vocabulary

If your poster or video includes new concepts and vocabulary, a good practice for improving comprehension is adding short explanations of each concept using the text and media tag. This tag type can include text, image, audio and links. An additional benefit for viewers is that these tags can be opened in Immersive Reader that includes automatic translation to over 80 languages.

Zooming into details in a scene

If your video lesson takes place in a relevant context for learning, or you are using a whiteboard for solving math problems, you may want to guide students’ attention as you speak and highlight specific details in a scene. A good simple way to do this is use the second tag type, text label.

Creating a feedback loop by including a call-to-action

The hardest part of teaching and training remotely is knowing if learners have watched your video or retained any of its content. This is why you want to link your video lesson to further learning activities, may that be some questions to think about, a more formal assignment, or a test. For questionnaires and quizzes, teachers can use embedded Google or Microsoft Forms. It is also possible to share the video to students or team members via an LMS or as a Microsoft Teams assignment.

The importance of teacher training and professional development

In a situation where a teacher may not have the tools, equipment and skills to create engaging and pedagogically sound materials for online learning, it is important to quickly invest in professional learning opportunities and create material for other teachers rather than directly to students. This is a valid argument for why schools also need to make sure their teachers can stay connected with their own learning communities that help them respond to the different learning needs and online learning opportunities together.

Examples and best practices for creating remote learning materials for students

How do elementary and secondary school teachers use interactive images and virtual tours in remote learning? Below is a collection of instructor-led strategies for using interactive media in online learning. Examples range from literacy instruction and language arts to history and religious studies. Rather than being lesson plans, these projects exemplify good practices for maximizing the learning outcomes using audio-visual pedagogy.

1. Explain visuals with text labels

I see a picture of a pyramid, but what am I supposed to pay attention to? Simple annotations help students pay attention to relevant details in images and graphs. In the example below, teacher Irene Londino uses text labels to explain the structure of Egyptian pyramids, and video tags to give more context to the topic.

2. Explain abstract concepts with detailed descriptions

Millions of students have heard about the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, set in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly, but how many can explain the goals in more detail or take action to reach them? Professor Annamaria Bove from 1. Instituto Comprensivo Nocera Inferiore created a valuable resource for her students and turned the famous UN infographic into an interactive resource, explaining each goal in detail and linking to more information.

3. Explain assignments using your voice

If you like to explain assignments to students verbally, but prefer not to make a selfie video for one reason or another, Astrid Hulsebosch, teacher at the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) has a solution for you: just snap a photo of yourself, and use the ThingLink voice recorder to add your instruction to students. In this example. Astrid instructs her students on how to use Flipgrid for their assignment!

4. Art history: Introduce a masterpiece

This is a good example of an interactive user-generated learning resource that can be useful for thousands of teachers. In this case, teacher Irene Londino created an introduction to Chagall’s White Crucifixion, presenting both information of Marc Chagall as well as explaining details of the painting.

5. Literature: Interpret a masterpiece

In some cases, a teacher’s devotion to a subject brings out new forms of art. David Del Carlo, docent and teacher trainer at the The Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), is a connoisseur of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. To celebrate the national Dante Alighieri Day, David and his students from the Lorenzini high school created a digital experience of Dante’s journey through Hell.

6. Read to your students

Many teachers like to read to their students. It can be challenging to keep this up on a video call over unreliable wifi, but there is a solution: you can easily record your reading on an image and send it to students as a link. In this example, high school literature teacher Ileana Orsini from Turin, Italy, created an interactive audio poster lesson introducing her students to the life and thinking of the Buddha.

7. Learn vocabulary in new places

There are many ways to take language learning out of the classroom to real-world contexts. In this example, Ornella Cappucchini, German teacher and instructional technology coach at Instituto Comprensivo Rovereto Est, takes her students to a virtual house tour, moving from one room to another highlighting vocabulary in German.

8. Narrate your own virtual lesson

Even if you cannot reach all your students at the same time online, you can simulate an in-person lesson by narrating a digital learning experience, adding additional information and questions along the way using sequential hotspots. Professor Barbara Antoniel from Andrea Scotton Technical Institute in Bassano says: “This is a literature lesson on Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. My objective was to use the flipped classroom method to immerse the student in a process of knowledge discovery through narrative, sound, sensory and visual stimulation.” This year, her institute won the innovative digital school prize in their province.

9. Create a virtual field trip with assignment

The next two examples would probably qualify as a new lesson format. Both use 360-degree images to create a multi-sensory learner journey though a physical place, enriched with various resources and tasks for students. In the first example, Maria Dente used Google Street View photos with illustrations, audio notes, text, photos, as well as embedded word completion games to introduce catacombs to 5th graders. The second example is a virtual field trip to a famous hillside estate, Fondazione il Vittoriale, in the town of Gardone Riviera created by professor Annamaria Bove.

10. Ask students to narrate a virtual audio tour

Teachers and students can collaborate remotely in many ways using ThingLink’s shared folders. For example, a teacher can add base images to a shared folder, where they can be collaboratively edited by students. In this example, 5th grade students of Romea Canini took turns and used their actual voices to tell the legend of the Republic of San Marino, the oldest and the smallest independent state in the world.

To sum up, in the above examples we can on one hand see various efforts to reinvent the traditional classroom experience in an online learning environment. On the other hand we can see plenty of seeds for new learning standards and learning methods using interactive visual media. Although some of the examples include well-articulated learning goals and learning paths that students can explore at their own pace, most examples here help students develop their knowledge and comprehension (see Bloom’s taxonomy).

What’s important is what happens after. With the blended approach, students would next apply the new knowledge in the classroom participating in discussions, group activities and assignments. In the fully online model, the role of the teachers shifts from an instructor to a facilitator of online discussions and meetings. In situations where students cannot access video conferences and online discussions, the learning resources need to include alternative models of asynchronous participation.

What can these models be, and what kind of assignments can students do at home independently that would open up development opportunities on the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy?

Supporting student-centered learning with interactive visual media

Project-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and problem-based learning are constructivist approaches to education that develop the learners skills for research, problem-solving and collaboration. The process is based on authentic questions and problems identified by students, and finding information and explanation models to research and solve them.

An important aspect of student-centered learning is documenting the various phases and aspects of the learning process. Sometimes documentation can become the most important learning activity that helps students build a synthesis from diverse elements, using multiple forms of media. The same principle applies to online education. Digital storytelling at its best is an act of putting parts together to form a coherent whole.

The following examples will show how students can use mixed media for completing various kinds of creative assignments and sharing them with their teacher and fellow students.

Best practices for developing students’ creativity and digital storytelling skills at home

School teachers use various visualization techniques as pedagogical tools to engage and help younger students who are having trouble focusing and reading. Educational research suggests that handwriting and doodling notes is better for later memory than typing notes using a keyboard.

When students are working remotely, there are several ways to combine handwriting, drawing, photography, or arts and crafts with student-centered learning projects using ThingLink.

In the following, we summarize 10 easy project ideas for remote learning that encourage students to 1) make handwritten, visual and pictorial notes, collages and artwork, and 2) enhance and explain their work using digital audio/text notes, photos and video. Each of the examples provide a mix of learning opportunities combining traditional student work in the classroom with digital storytelling at home. The projects can be shared to a learning management system or collaboration platform such as Canvas, Schoology, Google Education or Microsoft Teams.

1. Make an interactive greeting card

Project idea: Design an interactive greeting card for a friend or family member. Take a photo of the drawing or setup, and use ThingLink to add your voice greeting or other additional notes.

2. Create an interactive book report

Most elementary school and middle school students read at least 30 minutes every day.

Project idea: Create an interactive book report for each book you have read. Use ThingLink to add voice or text notes about the book.

3. Make a vocabulary poster in a foreign language

This is a true multi-channel exercise that combines an illustration of a word, its written form, as well as its pronunciation in a foreign language.

Project idea: Summarize a list of new words in a chapter or article you have read. Draw/doodle an illustration of each word. Use ThingLink to record the pronunciation for each word.

4. Introduce yourself

Between kindergarten and middle school, students engage in several art projects to introduce themselves to the rest of the classroom.

Project idea: Create an all-about-me poster. Use your phone or tablet to take a photo of it and explain it using text, video, or voice notes.

5. Create an interactive herbarium

Making your own herbarium is a great way for students and their parents to learn about botany and the plants.

Project idea: Go outside and find plants that you don’t already know. Take multiple photos of each plant in their natural habitat, or if you have brought them home, position each on a surface for a photo. Use ThingLink to add more information about them.

6. Make your own comic strips

Self-made comic strips can be used as a visualization technique for any subject. In this example, a 1st grade student took screenshots while playing Minecraft.

Project idea: Make your own comic strip, and add the speech bubbles and sound effects using ThingLink.

7. Create an interactive timeline

Timelines are a great way to memorize sequences of historical periods or events.

Project idea: Make a visualization of a timeline using your preferred technique. Use ThingLink to add more information about each detail.

8. Explain details of a painting

Several museums have recently opened their image archives for public use.

Project idea: Choose a painting and find more information about it online. Use ThingLink to explain the details of the painting to someone who does not know it.

9. Create an interactive map

Drawing maps is another great way to summarize learnings in social studies or science.

Project idea: Draw or paint a map, and use your phone or tablet to take a photo of it. Use ThingLink to add additional information, music, sounds, or interviews to the various spots on the map

10. Build a diorama

Diorama, a three-dimensional miniature model, is a wonderfully creative way for illustrating a story or a sequence of events.

Project idea: Use a combination of materials, techniques or toys to build a scene. Add voice or video narration to your story using ThingLink.

A note on student collaboration

If you have a School licence, students can work collaboratively on projects using Shared Folders. A shared folder is a collaborative space that lets students edit images collaboratively. For example, teachers can engage students by sharing untagged images or videos and invite them to embed text, narration, and videos in the shared resources. Alternatively, if students can access a mobile device and an outdoor space, teachers can create a hybrid learning environment and assign students to create an interactive presentation using their own photos and videos.

Summary of key points

Online learning has been a widely adopted practice in higher education, but there is limited research on how it works in basic education. When students are learning from home, we need to rethink the existing learning system and methods from multiple perspectives, one of which is learning materials and how they can support maintaining the daily connection between teachers and students.

We believe that the quality of online learning can be significantly improved by adopting new standards and practices for online learning materials, including:

• Consistent explanation of key concepts to improve comprehension and vocabulary development
• Affiliation to source information and related discussions to support transparency and critical thinking
• Integrated reading tools to improve accessibility
• Connection to related assignments or activities to encourage further learning

We hope that the arguments and examples in this article stimulate further discussion on the role of visual media in learning including new research-based models for online learning and online classes in elementary and secondary schools. The school based model of education is not dead, but the home base of the school is not anymore a physical building. The home base of the school is in the cloud as the physical environments for learning change.

How to get started with using interactive visual media in my school district? Do I need to involve the principal or the superintendent?

Several districts and principals are now offering new instructional tools and interactive learning technologies including teacher training and staff development options, webinars, and other online learning resources on setting up a virtual classroom and running online classes. There is a fair chance that someone in your district is already using ThingLink. We recommend that you send a note to the person responsible for instructional technology in your school and request a permission for a free ThingLink pilot for your school.

If your district already uses Office 365, Google Classroom, Canvas, or Clever, activating ThingLink for your school is easy!

Now On-Demand!

Watch anytime in comfort! Register to receive all the replay links.

Registration

We’re excited to extend an invitation to watch our special webinar that aims to bring new dimensions to interactive and immersive learning. Join us as ThingLink collaborates with Blockade Labs to introduce you to the transformative potential of Skybox AI technology.

Special Guests: 

– Marguerite deCourcelle, CEO of Blockade Labs

– Co-Hosts: Louise Jones, ThingLink & Dan Fitzpatrick, The AI Educator

Couldn’t Make It?

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Sign up anyway for the action replay!

Webinar Outcomes

1. Immersive Learning: Discover how text-to-360-image generation can be used to craft interactive learning materials that transcend traditional teaching tools.
2. The Gamification Factor: Learn how to incorporate elements of gamified experiences or games design into your curriculum to boost student engagement and enhance learning.
3. Ease of Technology: Learn how this is all pretty uncomplicated! We’ve simplified the tech aspects so that educators of all tech skill levels can integrate these new tools into their teaching methods effortlessly.
4. Deep Dive into AI: We’ll be discussing the role of AI in educational technology and going through some compelling examples.

And! A Special Bonus: Stay tuned until the end for a chance to win in our exclusive giveaway!

Who Should Attend?

This webinar is tailored for educators, course creators, games-design enthusiasts and learning technologists interested in adopting new approaches to learning and teaching. Whether you’re new to tech tools or have years of experience, this session is for you!

Key Takeaways:

1. Create learning assets with 360° interactive images for immersive experiences
2. Unlock strategies for boosting student engagement through gamification.
3. Gain insights into integrating user-friendly technology into your classroom.

Don’t miss this opportunity to explore new horizons in educational approaches.

We look forward to seeing you there!

In Action: Case Studies

• How to Create Extraordinary 360 Spaces With Blockade Labs’ Text to Image AI Tool
• How to Unlock the Awesome Power of AI in Education

Connect and Collaborate

For more ideas, use cases and inspiration on content creation, join our communities on social media! Twitter / X ThingLink Education and Blockade Labs Skybox AI LinkedIn Community and ThingLink Education Facebook Group. Discord Blockade Labs Community.

What is Skybox AI?

Skybox AI by Blockade Labs is a groundbreaking AI tool which empowers anyone to generate unique, high-quality and detailed 360 visuals from simple plain text prompts and a vast selection of styles. Creators can construct 360-degree immersive visuals ready for annotating in seconds, no coding required.

Why Choose Skybox AI and ThingLink? Benefits include:

1. Secure and Supported Learning: Introduce educators and students to the dynamic world of text-to-image generation in a secure and supported manner. ThingLink account management is all that is required, no additional Skybox accounts are created. The ability to craft prompts and continuously annotate creations not only adds depth to the learning experience but also serves as an invaluable step toward digital fluency.
2. User-Friendly Design: Creating interactive 360-degree worlds with ThingLink and Skybox is incredibly accessible, even for beginners. Kickstart your projects with  straightforward text prompts; no coding skills required.
3. Scalability: Whether you’re crafting a single immersive scene or constructing an expansive, interconnected world, ThingLink and Skybox offer infinite possibilities in terms of size and complexity.
4. Versatile Styling: Tailor the look and feel of your projects with a selection of styles—from “Whimsical World” and “Realistic,” to “Dreamlike,” and more.
5. Make use of VR Headsets: ThingLink has long been the go-to solution for creating content for VR Headsets such as ClassVR, as well as creating real-life contexts, this package enables educators and students to create VR ready experiences from worlds yet to be imagined.

Creating Powerful Moments of Insight – To Kill a Mocking Bird

Next Steps

Complete the form below! Schools, universities and businesses with a ThingLink organization account can purchase Skybox AI as an add-on service for all their users. The entry-level package, priced at $1,000, includes 15,000 image generations per year. If you are an individual Teacher or Professional Individual ThingLink account holder, please go direct to Blockade Labs for a free trial and account.

In Action: Case Studies of ThingLink and SkyBox AI Together

How to Create Extraordinary 360 Spaces With Blockade Labs’ Text to Image AI Tool

How to Unlock the Awesome Power of AI in Education

Connect and Collaborate

For more ideas, use cases and inspiration on content creation, join our communities on social media! Twitter / X ThingLink Education and Blockade Labs Skybox AI LinkedIn Community and ThingLink Education Facebook Group. Discord Blockade Labs Community.

Connect News and Stories

ThingLink X (Twitter) Blockade Labs X (Twitter) ThingLink LinkedIn Blockade Labs LinkedIn

Adding AI-assisted image generation to ThingLink’s creation flow

Since 2016, ThingLink has empowered educators and students to create virtual field trips, interactive walkthroughs, and engaging point-and-click games using annotated 360-degree images and videos.

Until now, users have had the option to download or purchase these images from libraries and photo services, or create their own. The integration with Skybox AI adds an exciting new dimension to ThingLink’s creative workflow. Educators and students can now utilize cutting-edge artificial intelligence to generate scenes for immersive learning experiences, storytelling and entry-level game development, further enhancing engagement and educational outcomes.

Embracing the next generation of storytelling

“We are empowering educators and students to become creators and embrace the next generation of storytelling. Using Skybox AI and ThingLink, it’s possible to both design and execute a visually stunning point-and-click game in the same study unit. It is like having a team of the world’s fastest and best illustrators helping visualize your ideas”.

ThingLink founder and CEO Ulla-Maaria Koivula.

ThingLink’s integration with Skybox AI helps streamline the immersive content creation process and saves time from creating visual assets in one service, and interactive projects in another. Previously, ThingLink has announced similar integrations with Canva and Unsplash.

In addition to the technical integration, ThingLink and Blockade Labs have agreed on a strategic partnership through which Skybox AI can be made accessible to entire organizations, instead of just individual users. This lets Blockade Labs quickly test customer interest in new market segments.

“Creating 3D worlds from text prompts without coding is a powerful step towards unlocking human creativity. We are excited for our partnership with ThingLink and for users to interact with these incredibly imaginative easy-to-use tools”.

Marguerite deCourcelle CEO Blockade Labs.

Schools, universities and businesses that have a ThingLink organization account can purchase Skybox AI as an add-on service for all of their users. The entry level package, priced at $1,000, includes 15,000 image generations per year.

About ThingLink

ThingLink is a trusted immersive learning technology partner for leading businesses and educational institutions in Europe and North America. Thousands of companies, schools, and higher education institutions use ThingLink to create interactive 2D, 3D, VR, and AR learning experiences, such as virtual tours, guided field trips, employee trainings, and branched multimedia simulations.

About Blockade Labs 

Blockade Labs specializes in AI-assisted 360-degree image generation technology. With Skybox AI, Blockade Labs aims to make the world of 360-degree imaging more dynamic, interactive, and accessible to all.

Connect News and Stories

ThingLink X (Twitter) and Blockade Labs X (Twitter)

ThingLink LinkedIn and Blockade Labs LinkedIn

Press Contact 

For additional information or to schedule an interview, please contact

Louise Jones

Community and Engagement @ ThingLink

louise@thinglink.com

Master ThingLink: Advanced Techniques for Crafting Next-Level Immersive Experiences

On Demand

You can view this webinar anytime! Register to receive an email with replay link!

Registration

The future of learning is immersive, interactive, and engaging. Are you ready to take your information and learning approaches to a whole new level? If so our upcoming webinar on ThingLink’s advanced features is just for you!

ThingLink has always been at the forefront of creating immersive learning experiences, making education more accessible and fun. Our platform has already transformed the way many organizations and educational institutions engage with their audience, and we want to help you do the same. That’s why we are thrilled to announce our upcoming webinar that will delve deep into ThingLink’s advanced features, designed to make your educational content more interactive than ever.

Couldn’t join us?

Sign up anyway and we’ll make sure you receive a link to the action replay!

What Will You Learn?

The webinar is carefully structured around four main learning outcomes to give you a comprehensive understanding of capabilities with ThingLink’s suite of tools. 

1. Advanced Settings: Optimize Your Content

Discover the hidden potential of your information or learning material by exploring ThingLink’s advanced settings. From tailoring user navigation to including personalized assessment elements, we’ll guide you through the options that make your content not just engaging but also effective.

2. Scenario Builder: Craft Realistic In-Context Learning

Learn how to use the ThingLink Scenario Builder to create realistic, contextual learning experiences. Understand how to set conditions, triggers, and responses that mimic real-world situations, creating a risk-free learning environment for your users.

3. Media Types: Diversify Your Content

The more varied your content, the more engaged your learners will be. Learn how to incorporate different types of media including video, audio, and text to appeal to varied learning styles and make your material more engaging and comprehensive.

4. Working with 360 Images: A Whole New Perspective

Get hands-on experience on how to integrate 360-degree images into your content. We will cover best practices and tips on how to make the most out of this immersive feature to create engaging spatial narratives.

Other Ideas for learning about ThingLink you’ll love!

• Free ThingLink Certified Creator Course
• Previous ThingLink On Demand Webinars
• Search Support Articles or Request Support

Connect and Collaborate

For more ideas, use cases and inspiration on content creation, join our communities on social media! LinkedIn Community, Twitter Creative Learning Design Community and ThingLink Education Facebook Group.

The Importance of Integrating ThingLink into Canvas Courses

ThingLink provides a pathway for enhancing and amplifying course material by incorporating interactive images, videos, 360-degree media, and 3D models. By blending these various interactive components, educators can craft powerful educational experiences such as supplementary teaching materials, project-centered learning, situational contexts, virtual excursions, or educational field trips that bring a multi-layered, engaging dimension to course topics.

How to Add ThingLink Elements to Canvas Courses

Once your system admin has established the LTI 1.3 connection, instructors can easily insert ThingLink assets into their courses. To do this, simply use the “Add an activity or resource” feature within course editing. ThingLink will be listed among the available choices, enabling you to either incorporate pre-existing ThingLink assets or generate new interactive elements.

Monitoring Tracking Student Engagement

Employ ThingLink’s analytics tools, which are also accessible through Moodle, to gauge how students are interacting with the embedded media elements. This insight is invaluable for modifying both course content and instructional approaches. Additionally, any grades earned within ThingLink’s immersive scenarios will automatically be integrated into course grade books thanks to the LTI 1.3 link.

Advantages of Utilizing ThingLink in Canvas

1. Boosted engagement: ThingLink adds an interactive overlay on various media formats, thereby enriching the learning experience for students.
2. Resource amplification: The integration lets teachers link to external resources directly through media, offering a more comprehensive understanding of course topics.
3. Data-driven decisions: The analytics provided by ThingLink enable instructors to fine-tune their teaching strategies based on actual student interactions. In ThingLink Scenarios student assessments / goals are written back directly to Canvas gradebooks
4. Automated account creation: With LTI 1.3, students’ ThingLink accounts are automatically created, removing the need for any additional registration steps.

Integrating ThingLink into Canvas courses via LTI 1.3 offers substantial benefits, particularly in the areas of interactive education and content amplification. Educators are encouraged to take advantage of this synergy to create a more stimulating and effective learning environment.

Connect and Collaborate

For more ideas, use cases and inspiration on content creation, join our communities on social media! LinkedIn Community, Twitter Creative Learning Design Community and ThingLink Education Facebook Group.