The Bionic Falcon: Create annotated visuals with ThingLink

Here's a great tech tool tip from Rachel Maleski:

I'm a visual learner, which usually drives my husband nuts whenever we're trying to assemble a new item. Imagine how well that went when we had 80 million pieces of baby gear to put together a few years back. I wanted to sit and read the directions and look at the visuals, whereas my kinesthetic better half wanted to dive head-first into assembly.

Neil Flemings VAK (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) model suggests that certain people learn better through certain modes. And while, in my humble opinion, everyone learns in a combination of varied modes, sometimes certain concepts are best taught in conjunction with visual aids.

ThingLink is a great web-based tool that allows users to take any image and then tag it with information, including the ability to link to other websites. The terms of use say that anyone of any age can use ThingLink, but that children under 13 should be supervised during use. It does require a sign up using an email address, but there is no confirmation email so students can sign up for free accounts.

You or your students can create ThingLinks for virtually anything. Maybe I would have understood imaginary numbers better as a fledgling math student had my Algebra teachers used visuals. (Sorry math team, but I mean, really, how is a number imaginary?!)

Here are some of my ideas followed by a screen shot of a ThingLink I made about DNA (click on the image to take you to the actual ThingLink):

Using the picture "Into the Jaws of Death", have students tag the picture with historical facts about the invasion of Normandy and D-Day.

Use this picture of Nick Johnson to determine whether or not he is using accurate layup form and tag the correct or incorrect postures.

Use an image from the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird to discuss injustice and racial inequality as portrayed in the novel.

Tag a model picture of DNA to discuss the history and structure of DNA. (see my example below)

The tagged images can be kept private in ThingLink and there is also the feature that can allow other users to tag the image. Students can make the image private and uneditable, and share the link with you, or it can be kept private but share the link with classmates for them to add tags to the image (thus making it collaborative). There are lots of options with this neat web-based application.