We are delighted to present our first video series covering  specifically the teaching methods underpinning uses of interactive media in education.

The 'teaching in action' videos presented here, with narration, take you through a journey looking at bringing concepts to life for learners, documenting learning, virtual tours and creating engaging and exiting learning experiences. Each short video explores a use case with explanation of the teaching methods in action. The second part of the video series (coming soon) will look a little more closely at the pedagogical uses of ThingLink in Technical, Vocational, Education & Training (TVET) settings. 

Topics: How To, education, ThingLink, interactive, learning experience

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, educational institutions relied heavily on in-person visits to attract new admissions for the following school year. With limits on physical visits, school admission teams are increasingly relying on digital marketing and communications and are using ThingLink to create engaging virtual visits instead. 

Topics: Featured, How To, virtual tour, exhibition, Tour Creator, higher education, ThingLink

We’re really excited to share that ThingLink has today announced an integration with Canva, the global visual communications platform. An option to create base graphics with Canva is added directly to ThingLink’s creation flow, allowing users to quickly create professional-looking interactive materials for online education, training, marketing, and communications.

UPDATE! Join us on May 6th @11am PDT - 1pm CDT - 7pm BST for an exclusive joint webinar for our global educators. Learn how to create interactive, accessible and engaging learning experiences with Canva and ThingLink. Register via this thinglink or watch live on Facebook. 

Canva launched in 2013, and has today more than 55 million monthly active users in 190 countries creating everything from presentations to infographics, reports, videos, websites and more. Many teachers and visual content professionals are already using Canva and ThingLink together to create interactive resources for websites and online learning. Now we’ve made it even easier to combine the two!

ThingLink’s integration makes Canva’s library of design templates available to ThingLink’s 8 million content creators within a simple, user-friendly drag and drop interface. This makes the creation process for high quality interactive  visuals easier and faster. After signing up to thinglink.com, users can choose a base image from connected image libraries, or design a new base image within the Canva interface, reducing time and increasing flexibility. ThingLink will also be publishing a variety of Canva templates designed to support ThingLink’s most popular user cases such as interactive maps, brochures, CVs, infographics and virtual tours to further help their creators maximize the Canva platform within ThingLink. 

“We are excited to have Thinglink on board as a partner through the Canva Button integration, as we have so many users in common,” said Laura Haines, the Group Lead for Print and Partnerships at Canva. “We know so many organizations are striving for better ways to drive engagement through visual media which we both support. The ThingLink and Canva partnership helps deliver on that vision and more.”

In addition to combining graphic design and image augmentation to the same creation flow, ThingLink and Canva users now have an opportunity to get new engagement data for their creations. For example, if they created an interactive infographic with embedded videos and other micro learning opportunities, they can now see which areas of the infographic have been viewed and clicked the most.

“Our focus has always been making it easy for anyone to create visually stunning interactive media, and Canva has the same approach to design.  ThingLink’s editor together with Canva’s design capabilities is an unbeatable combination, and it’s definitely the easiest and fastest way to create top quality smart visual media assets for online education, training and communication. This is a must-have tool combination for millions of visual content creators, and we are absolutely thrilled about this partnership”, says Ulla Koivula Engeström, founder & CEO of ThingLink.  

Topics: How To, education, ThingLink, interactive, learning experience, canva, graphic design

This short post explains step by step how to share your tours for VR headsets quickly and easily, getting your learners immersed in the action straight away!

Topics: How To, VR, education, VR Lessons, virtual tour, 360, immersive learning, Tour Creator, contextual learning, ThingLink, interactive, learning experience

A youth-adult fellowship used online graphic design platform Canva when creating a highly impactful ThingLink to showcase video testimonials. This memorable and thought-provoking piece of work put a sociological theory into practice in a brilliantly simple way. 

Topics: Featured, How To, higher education, ThingLink, teach for america

Almost every organization offers courses to students, staff or lifelong learners via their chosen Learning Management System. This article shows how you can improve engagement and results by embedding immersive multimedia experiences directly in your LMS. 

Topics: How To, education, immersive learning, eLearning, remote learning, digital skills, contextual learning, ThingLink, interactive, embed, LMS, learning experience, LTI

Some university courses can move online easily, but what about subjects involving machinery, materials and complex construction, where students would normally work in a workshop, lab or building site? Karelia University used ThingLink to bridge the gap!

Karelia University of Applied Sciences is located in the city of Joensuu, eastern Finland and runs courses to bachelor and masters level in seven fields. Within the field of civil engineering, their special area of expertise is wood construction. When Covid restrictions on university teaching were introduced, tutor Ville Mertanen, Project Specialist in Wood Construction, had to quickly create an introduction to all the workshop machinery which students would be using regularly when back on-site.

Topics: Featured, How To, online learning, G Suite for Education, higher education, ThingLink, Escape Rooms

Keep Everyone on the Same Page! How to embed web-based tools and sites into a ThingLink.

The ThingLink editor provides 4 incredibly powerful tag types:  A combination Text and Media Tag, a plain Text Tag, a Tour Tag to link your ThingLinks together and - last but by no means least - the impressively versatile ‘Embed Tag’. In this post we provide a little more information on the what, how and why of using this deceptively simple yet impactful tag.

Topics: Interactive video, How To, education, Product Marketing, Touchscreen, remote learning, creativity, digital storytelling, digital skills, teacher training, contextual learning, ThingLink, interactive, embed

February 22, 2021 - Saimaa Interface Update - the year 2021 has accelerated the adoption of new solutions for online learning and publishing at an unprecedented pace. At ThingLink, the increased demand shows as a sharp 50% increase in new monthly signups.  Over 100,000 new users login to ThingLink every month to create engaging visual experiences for their students, employees or customers. For may, ThingLink has become a home for hundreds, even thousands of interactive images and videos. Our new interface offers them improved options for arranging and managing this content.

Topics: Featured, Visual Web, How To, Product Marketing, online learning, distance learning, creativity, digital skills, contextual learning, feature update

Create your own 360° Gallery with our new Canva Template and ThingLink It!

The ThingLink Team are often asked for advice on how to create 360° images. To be helpful,  we have created support pages on taking 360° photographic images using a 360 camera or even with a smartphone and app such as Google Street View.  

Topics: How To, VR, 360, Images, exhibition, Tour Creator, creativity, digital skills, contextual learning, ThingLink, interactive