Tarina by ThingLink: How Ylitornio Apple Distinguished School Got Students Talking

Aleksi Komu October 23, 2026

From the Blank Page to Creative Storytelling with Tarina by ThingLink

At Ylitornion yhteiskoulun lukio, an Apple Distinguished School in Finnish Lapland, teachers explored how creating with images, text, audio and video could encourage students to use their language skills more actively.

Principal Sari Lantto and language teacher Hanna-Maria Viippola introduced Tarina by ThingLink, for AI-free student creation on iPads to first-year and second-year students studying Swedish and English. Across two lessons, students worked in groups to create interactive landscape comparisons and school introduction tours.

The teachers observed that students were more active than during a typical writing task. By building their work around authentic images and adding language one tag at a time, students had a natural starting point for expressing their ideas.

At a Glance

• School: Ylitornion yhteiskoulun lukio (Ylitornio upper secondary school), an Apple Distinguished School
• Location: Finnish Lapland, Finland
• Students: First-year and second-year upper secondary students
• Subjects: Swedish and English
• Devices: iPad
• Projects: Interactive comparisons of Icelandic and Finnish landscapes, and school introduction tours
• Initial outcome: Teachers observed more active participation than in a typical writing task, prompting plans to introduce Tarina into language courses during the following study period.

The Challenge: Helping Students Get Started

Sari and Hanna-Maria wanted students to practise creative storytelling through text, audio, video and combinations of these formats. Working in small groups would also give students opportunities to develop their interaction and speaking skills.

A familiar challenge was getting students started. Being asked to write a passage in a foreign language can feel daunting, even when the task is relatively short. The teachers wanted an approach that would help students break the work into smaller contributions and give them different ways to communicate.

Tarina provided a visual starting point. Students could build their stories around photographs, adding individual words, longer descriptions and recordings through interactive tags.

The Projects: Landscapes and School Life

Comparing Iceland and Finland in Swedish

Second-year Swedish students created an interactive comparison of nature in Iceland and Finland. They added text and audio tags to photographs, using Swedish to label features and describe the landscapes. A scene transition connected an Icelandic landscape with a Finnish one, bringing the comparison together.

“The transition worked really beautifully as the landscape changed from Iceland to Finland.”

Sari Lantto, Principal

The photographs gave students something concrete to describe, while the tags allowed them to develop their work in smaller sections.

Introducing Their School in Swedish and English

First-year Swedish and English students created scenes introducing their school. Working in groups, they combined images with language and media to show different parts of school life.

One group filmed a sped-up journey from one classroom to another and added it as a video tag, bringing movement and a sense of place to their tour.

“The students got straight to work in their groups, and they seemed to be having fun.”

Sari Lantto, Principal

Students shared their completed work to Showbie directly from the online folder, fitting the projects into the school’s existing workflow.

What the Teachers Observed

A More Manageable Approach to Language Production

The clearest observation was the difference in students’ participation. Adding language to individual tags appeared to make the task more approachable than producing a continuous piece of writing.

“Students were more active than they would have been in a normal text-production task.”

“There was no blank page in front of them that needed, say, a 400-character piece of writing. Here the work can be split into parts, and some of it can be produced directly as speech.”

Sari Lantto, Principal

Students could contribute a word, a description or an audio recording, gradually building these elements into a complete project. This gave them several ways to use the language within the same activity.

Writing and Speaking Within One Project

Audio tags enabled students to record spoken language alongside their written contributions. The projects therefore created opportunities to practise both writing and speaking, with the images providing a shared context for each.

For the teachers, this supported their original aim of encouraging students to tell stories through different types of media.

An Accessible Starting Point for Creation

Students described Tarina as easy, clear and simple to use. They found moving tags on an image intuitive, and the guide lines helped them position their content. Sari also found the interface clear and easy to navigate.

This ease of use helped students get started quickly and spend lesson time developing their projects.

A Shared Creative Task

Group work was central to both activities. Students created a shared outcome using text, audio and video, supporting the teachers’ aim of combining language production with collaboration and interaction.

The variety of media also gave groups flexibility in how they presented their ideas, from short descriptions of landscapes to a video journey through the school.

From an Initial Trial to Further Classroom Use

Following the first two lessons, the school planned to introduce Tarina into Sari’s and Hanna-Maria’s language courses during the next study period, with an introduction for the wider teaching staff also planned.

A future project will involve students documenting the school’s trip to Italy. This will extend the approach into storytelling based on places and experiences students encounter themselves.

Sari’s advice to colleagues at other Apple schools was straightforward: adopt it. In her experience, once the app was available on students’ devices, getting started was easy.

A Promising Start

This initial classroom experience offered an encouraging example of how visual, multimedia creation can support participation in language lessons. Teachers observed more active engagement, while students used both written and spoken language to create something they could share.

One student’s feedback captured the positive response:

“Nice app, keep it going!”

For Ylitornio, the first two lessons provided a practical starting point for further use: familiar subjects, collaborative projects and opportunities to build language one contribution at a time.