In classroom use, ThingLink is a visual documentation tool that can support the various phases of active, student-centered learning. 

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 documentation. Students are encouraged to use multiple sources and forms of media to collect information and to share it with others as they deepen their understanding of the chosen topic.

Image: Active student-centered learning model, translated and adopted from Lakkala, M. & Lallimo, J. (2002). 

TASK 1: Document potential research questions onsite using text and photo annotations

Our first teacher challenge task focuses on taking multimedia notes outside the classroom. We will document potential research questions in our chosen real-world context using text and photo annotations. You will learn:

Technical skills: Taking multimedia notes using ThingLink mobile app or a desktop editor.  

Pedagogic skills: Basic understanding of how to apply multimedia documentation to different stages of a student-centered learning process.

Our topic: Biodiversity

The context for our first task is biodiversity, broadly speaking, what does it mean, how do we understand it, what are examples of it locally, how does it impact our lives, etc. Our task is to document potential research questions to study biodiversity using simple text and photo annotations. 

Example:

Task description

1: Visit an outdoor location: a forest, park, garden, or your own backyard, and make observations about its biodiversity. Think about questions that you would be interested in learning more about.

2: Take photos of the location using your phone or tablet. 

3: Log on your teacher account on ThingLink.com. Select one or two background photos of the place and upload them to ThingLink.

4: Document observations and potential research questions on the image using text and photos.

5: When you are ready, submit your project using this form.

Tips:

If you use ThingLink mobile app for iOS or Android, you can also record notes and questions directly in the image. 

Further reading on the subject:

Lonka, Hakkarainen, Sintonen (2000): Progressive inquiry learning for children — Experiences, possibilities, limitations

Jari Simonaho is a technology specialist at POKE Vocational College where he has participated in multiple projects innovating learning environments for vocational education. He trains teachers and students to adopt new technologies in learning. The idea for the virtual museum came from visiting the British Museum in London; there was so much to see, but not enough time to explore it all. This got him thinking it would be great to be able to visit museums virtually from home without any time limits, this would make museums accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

Project goals:

• Develop an experience that increases understanding of local history without time and space limitations
• Let students explore the tour at their own pace to encourage curiosity, develop self-directed learning, and in-depth understanding of contents
• Create a model for developing organization skills for producing materials for virtual tours
• Create a model for developing technical skills for editing virtual tours

Tools used:

• ThingLink for creating an interactive virtual museum presentation
• 360-degree camera with a monopod
• Windows 10 Photos App for editing photos and videos

Note: Editing was kept at a minimum to show teachers and students that expert level skills or expensive software are not necessary to create a virtual museum.

Production in three phases

Preparation: Jari introduced the idea of a virtual museum to a small local museum in  Äänekoski that is currently closed from the public.  The timing was good, since the museum was about to be moved to a new location. They let Jari in to document the old museum space and its objects. 

Documentation: Jari captured three different types of media for the tour:

• 360-images and regular images of the main spaces with audio guides
• 360-images connecting different parts of the museum
• 1-min video clips of curator explanations
• 1-minute video clips about the details of different artifacts

The purpose of using multiple short videos was to help the students stay focused, and to encourage self-paced exploration of the museum.  

Editing: Jari included in his tour over 20 different scenes of the museum space. Identifying, capturing and adding all the details  to each of the scenes took about 40 hours in total.

The value of virtual museum tours to teachers

Jari thinks teachers can benefit from virtual museum tours in multiple ways:

• Primary school teachers who lack time and resources could use it to introduce local history to their students.
• Tours of familiar places inspire students to create their own tours and experiences and this way increase engagement in learning.
• Museums as partners benefit from these kinds of projects as they can use the virtual tours for marketing and for reaching visitors who could not otherwise access the museum.

Tips for colleagues:

Documentation:

• Make sure 360-camera is horizontally level before taking pictures.
• Always take multiple 360-degree pictures with different exposure settings from each spot and then on computer choose the best pictures for ThingLink.
• Use the remote shutter option, Bluetooth function, or time interval shooting and then go hide somewhere out of the picture area to avoid being exposed in the pictures.
• Reserve plenty of time for a project like this.

Other tips:

• A teacher could prepare questions for the students and then let them find the answers from the virtual museum which means that the teacher could motivate students with gamification.
• By allowing the students to create their own virtual tours, teachers can nurture the students to be creators and innovators.

Result: Students got summer jobs as virtual tour producers

The feedback for Jari’s project has been overwhelmingly positive and other museums in the area have become interested to create similar virtual tours. As a result, the city of Äänekoski hired students from POKE Vocational School to create 360-degrees virtual content for tourism. These tours will be ready after the summer!

Jari’s testimonial: “Well-made virtual history tours can support teachers by giving them an immersive learning environment that’s like a book that the students can walk into. A virtual tour is not limited to text and photos.”

Educator: Karalee Nakatsuka teaches U.S. History at First Avenue Middle School in Arcadia. In a collaborative project between their history and ELA departments, Mrs Nakatsuka’s students interviewed immigrants to America, and created interactive virtual museums to tell their immigrant stories.

Goals:

• Get first-hand experience of immigration and the conditions that pushed immigrants out of their home country as well as the conditions which  pulled them to America.
• Learn how to conduct an oral history interview
• Develop digital production and presentation skills using multiple content creation tools

Tools used:

• Google Slides, WeVideo, Animoto, Storyjumper or ScreenCastify for documenting immigrant story
• Flipgrid for sharing reflections on immigration
• Google Tour Creator to visualize the immigrant journey
• ThingLink for creating an interactive virtual museum presentation

Background: From tri-fold boards to interactive images

Early on, Mrs Nakatsuka and the First Avenue Middle School 8th grade team started hosting an Ellis Island Day to give her students an opportunity to reflect on what it was like to immigrate to America.

Students took the information they learned from their oral histories and created tri-fold boards, introducing their immigrant’s experience to their classmates. On Ellis Island Day, they placed the boards in a classroom and designated this space their “Immigration Museum” where students had the opportunity to visit the museum and learn about their classmates’ stories.

This was a great activity, but it had its limitations:  

• Many students ran out of time and couldn’t finish viewing the displays
• Absent students and community members missed out on visiting the “Immigration Museum”
• Display boards were bulky, challenging to set up and take down,  and students were limited in what they could share on each panel.
• Absent students missed the opportunity to view their fellow students’ projects.  

Project idea: Student-created virtual museums

After Karalee started using ThingLink, she was inspired to teach her students how to document their work and create their own virtual museums. The process was organized into six tasks:

1. Select a person with an immigrant story for the interview
2. Conduct interview
3. Write up interview
4. Prepare a presentation and a movie/animation of the immigrant story
5. Create a customized background image for the Virtual Museum –including a directory of embedded information
6. Tag the Virtual Museum with ThingLink and include:

• A picture of the interviewee
• A picture or video of a meaningful artifact to the immigrant
• A video highlighting one aspect of the immigrant’s experience (e.g. MyMap, PuppetPals, Animoto, WeVideo, Powtoons, Storyjumper)
• A map tracing the immigrant’s journey
• A slides presentation of the immigrant story (using information from their Oral History interview)
• A Flipgrid video reflection of the immigrant story, and optionally
• An audio or video capture including the immigrant’s voice.

This list of materials became the directory that helped viewers navigate the museum.

Finally, teachers can collect all of the individual virtual museum links into one starting image.

Compared to the three-fold cardboard display, virtual museum presentations had the following benefits:

• They can be shared with everyone. This means absent students, community members, parents and fellow teachers can visit student museums even if they cannot attend the annual Ellis Island Day.

• Students can include more information in their virtual museum–pictures, movies, their English oral history presentations, Flipgrid videos and more.
• Provides  students opportunities to use and practice 21st century skills

Tips or comments for colleagues:

• Previous knowledge of ThingLink will ensure student success.  Provide opportunities for students to use ThingLink throughout the school year. Scaffolding will ensure a successful product.  
• Collect the personal museum urls from students on a Google Form and use these links to tag in the main room of the museum.
• Create a ThingLink tour by linking multiple images; the students will be able to “travel” through the different countries/continents as they visit their schoolmates’ virtual museums.

Karalee’s testimonial:

“ThingLink provides endless opportunities for both student and teacher to bring history to life. It engages students to practice and develop their 21st century skills as they collaborate and problem solve during the creation of their museums. And unlike the tri-fold presentation boards of the past, student content is not limited, and the end product can be shared outside of the confines of the four walls of our classroom. ”

Educator: Grace Ko is a Ph.D. student in Learning Technologies at the University of Texas, Austin. She has been a high school English teacher in Korea for the past seven years and has participated in multiple projects that involve technology integration in learning. Grace has worked as a research teacher at the Seoul Future School and developed mobile application WikiTalki to facilitate language learning in public schools. Currently, her research interest lies in the application of AR and AR in learning.

Goals:

• Develop understanding of special education class management tactics for pre-service teachers
• Provide the experience of visiting special education classroom in Virtual Reality (VR) format
• Suggest a new type of professional development/ teacher training material in interactive VR experience

Tools used:

• ThingLink for creating an interactive virtual classroom presentation
• 360-degree camera with a monopod

Background: Tackling Lack of Special Education Training in Teacher Credential Programs 

Teacher credential program for general subject teachers only require one 3-credit course on the topic of special education. This course is often insufficient both in terms of information and practical experience for the teachers to serve students with special needs in the future.

Nevertheless, an increasing number of general education teachers face this challenge in their everyday teaching as integrated education model is becoming popular. Thus, Grace thought it is crucial to find innovative methods for pre-service teachers to have experiences that can lead to better understanding and preparation for teaching in integrated classrooms.

Project Idea: Innovating Professional Development with Interactive VR Experience

Grace wanted to try bringing the pre-service teachers into the special education classrooms through Virtual Reality (VR). She teamed up with Kai Osorio, a Policy Analyst at San Francisco United School District to visit two well-equipped special education classrooms in Northern California. In the first phase, Grace and Kai:

1. Took  360 photos of special education classrooms
2. Interviewed special education teachers and
3. Documented each component in the classroom, such as Mood Meter, Math Tangibles, and Individual Working Stations that helped provide a more profound understanding of the special education tactics used in a classroom.

For creating the  VR experience, they reviewed various VR content creation platforms and chose ThingLink for five reasons:

• The interface design is simple, modern, and EASY
• Tour creator enables to see  the classroom environment from different angles
• Editor supports embed links that lets teachers to read & watch more information
• A broad variety of interactions to keep teachers focused throughout the tour 
• Viewing in various high-end VR headsets to fully enable a virtual field experience

The virtual special education classrooms created by Grace and Kai are showcased at the ThingLink booth in the Microsoft Mixed Reality area at ISTE 2019, Philadelphia.