Thinglink

By Marisa R. Frattaroli

It means Special Education Needs and of course techonology is there to help. A concept embedded in our 21st-century classroom with the solely purpose of helping learning and learners.

Due to covid 19 classroom were forced to surf the internet with the challenge to find the tool, easy and free, that may help all kind of teachers transmit knowledge, guide students and comply with all the red tape which is still going on behind the scene of any teaching process.

Tools, there are many: wordart, socrative, even facebook or youtube that once had been created to promote communication, have became a classroom tool to engage and some spicey element in a lesson.

Morever, if we come to think of social media, a fake tweeter is available for us teachers and students to play as if we have a tweeter account where a novel or even our comments on it can be tweeted.

As said before reality is brought to our classrooms as a way to prepare our 21-st-cetntury citizens. Not only are we citizen of a country but also of a wider nation that is raising, like the sun. A digital one, this time without borders.

As stated by law,in Argentina our classroom should become inclusive. As we are all responsible, socially responsible to include any person and adapta our classrooms to them. And not, anymore, people to our classrooms.

How is this possible? How can we scaffold our students with special needs?

If we take into account that every single Student has its own needs, we will have 50 % of our job done. Each learner has their own needs , and also different reason for being in the class. All our tools, procedures and senses should be directed to find out the best way to help them acquire the language.

Thinglink, the tool I found the most amazing ....Let's see how to use it.....

Any technological tool may bring about a chance for each student to learn at their own pace and time. Respecting their timing and allowing them to learn in a safe environment. Not all our students are exactly the same, each one represent a story, a culture and even a different background knowledge which makes them what they are: an arrey of colours, a rainbow.

Images that become

Sounds , words and liks

A tool that opens up and hyperlinks you to whatever world you would like to visit. Just by clicking on the dot.

Now how can we develop a class using thinglink as one of the tools.... sooo easy... Let' s see an example of a class

Final Task: A Fashion Show.

Warm-up: Bingo Baker

After playing a bingo to revise colors and any other previous knowledge that may help the acquisition of the new vocabulary items, Sts will watch a scene from the movie and draw the items that they find more interesting or do not like at all.

MY CLOTHES by Marisa FrattaroliTOUCH this image to discover its story. Image tagging powered by ThingLink

Final Task: Students will prepare their own Fashion Show taking into account the short movie presented and the vocabulary that was presented using thinglink.

Now, What seems to be just an image is inviting your students to join a jurney of discovery where they are the only responsible for it. Students are being agencied by enablers teachers. Thinglink helps students pace along the vocabulary together with the back up of images and hyperlinks to audios. Needless to say, all its options are of tremendous help for those students and teacher in need of special timeing, either because of lack of time or different capacities which represents our ultimate goal of an inclusive classroom.