It was back at the third Cohort 21 face-to-face when Tim first told me about the early stages of his investigation into ThingLink, a web-tool that allows you to “create and discover rich images”. Seems simple enough, right? And where better to implement such a tool than in a unit I was developing for the graphic novel, Maus. 

I decided to tread slowly into this new territory, as teaching graphic novels is also something new I was trying this year and it’s one of those areas where I was never formally taught anything. I tested my own abilities by creating a ThingLink preview of the cover of Maus and was pretty proud of what I had come up with. I was feeling more confident and thought that if I showed them my own thoughts as an exemplar, then they could step in and take care of some other frames on their own.

The time came to begin the unit and the lights went down and the projector came on. All I needed now was action.

I started with just a picture of the cover, without any of my annotations. As soon as the picture came up, the conversation started buzzing and students were shouting out questions about colours, and “why are they mice?”, and “oh look! there is a cat at the centre of the Nazi symbol!”. I realized the learning had begun before I even had time to fire the gun. In the classic teacher move of throwing out the plans, working with what is given, and valuing the natural learning that is taking place, I immediately dragged the unannotated image into ThingLink and started to capture what they were saying without saying a word. Soon, they noticed what I was doing and quickly the buzzing became more focussed and more collaborative. Soon enough we had reached an image that was entirely student generated and demonstrated far more learning and creativity than a mere introduction to the tool could have ever done.

I should try and explain the success and engagement. Perhaps the answer falls somewhere in the realm of Marzano’s Nine Instructional Strategies for Effective Teaching and Learning. Surely, this counts as cooperative learning! Or maybe it’s better explained through the SAMR model, although I’m not sure I made it too far along the line toward redefinition today. Maybe the answer is somewhere in this gigantic colourful wheel?

(Check out this blog article about ThingLink through the SAMR lens).

Or maybe the answer lies more in the educational benefits of graphic texts? I’m sure, like all things, the answer doesn’t fit nicely into a box. Maybe, in the words of songwriter Dan Bern, if we must put it in a box  “make sure it’s a big box with lots of windows and door to walk through and a nice hat chimney”.

For now, I’m just very proud of my class and looking forward to seeing what they think of next!