Recently, Mrs. Pettis asked for my help in selecting a digital tool that would allow students to gather information about topics from Ancient Egypt. She uses a teaching technique called the "jigsaw method" where students research and create sharable content around a single topic from a larger body of information. Once each student finishes, they are responsible for teaching the rest of the class about their single topic area thus giving every child the opportunity to gain information about the entire topic, in this instance, Ancient Egypt. (family life, structures, food, clothing, government, farming etc.)
Mrs. Pettis and I considered a few digital tool options, but in the end, Thinglink seemed to fit the requirements best. Thinglink allows students to add information (text, web pages and online videos) to a single image making it highly interactive. When a cursor passes over a bullet on the image, the content appears. (Check out the student Thinglink image above!)
Before we began, we set up Mrs. Pettis with a class in Thinglink, which created a code for students to join her class. It only took a few minutes, but made things go smoothly when we introduced it to her students for the first time.
The end result was an attractive and sharable image loaded with content for students to explore. It was an excellent way for students to share their knowledge so others could learn the content as well.