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TarinaStudent Creation that Develops Foundational Skills
Built for iPad classrooms, where students capture the real world.
Tarina — Finnish for "story" — is for authentic work, built by students engaging with real places and projects.
Real-World, Contextual Learning
Deep learning happens when students move beyond consuming information to investigating real environments and articulating their understanding in their own voice. Capturing and documenting the world around them builds cognitive skills — observation, classification, analysis, and reflection — alongside the digital competencies. Because students author every element themselves, the app is suitable for assessing student learning. What teachers evaluate is genuinely the student’s own thinking, not AI output.
Create Virtual Field Trips and Tours
Students turn a heritage site, a science lab, or their own neighbourhood into an immersive story with photos, audio narration, and interactive hotspots.
Document Learning
Active learning in action: Students investigate and structure their projects and processes, turning finished work into something they can narrate, submit for assessment.
Ideas by Subject
View Idea Sparks from ThingLink trainers and team.
STEM
Document an engineering or coding build step by step: capture each stage, annotate design decisions, and explain the result.
Biology
Map a local habitat: photograph species in a pond or woodland, tag each one, and record field notes on its role in the ecosystem.
History
Guide a tour of a local monument or museum exhibit: research each artefact, add narrated hotspots, and connect it to the period.
Language arts
Build the setting of a story students are writing: an interactive scene they narrate in their own voice, rich with descriptive detail.
Arts
Curate a virtual gallery of their own work or a local mural trail, with recorded artist statements on technique and inspiration.
School tour
A student-made welcome tour of the school: an interactive map with narrated stops for new students and families.
A Complete Assignment Workflow, from Creation to Assessment
Students can begin creating within minutes of downloading the free app on iPad, or other iOS devices. Connecting to your school’s ThingLink account completes the workflow: teachers set the assignment, students create and submit their work, and return it to the teacher for review, all within a single environment.
1
Assign
Give assignments directly, on your LMS, or use a shared folder on ThingLink.
2
Students create
Take photos, add notes. Projects are saved on the local device.
3
Submit
Shared folders show directly in the sharing options.
4
Review
Assess real understanding. Authentic stories are hard to copy.
Student Creation in Tarina, Teacher Tools in ThingLink
Tarina is designed for AI-free student creation, while connecting it to ThingLink empowers teachers with fast, easy ways to create engaging learning materials and assignments.
Students · Tarina appStudent creation in Tarina
- AI-free creation, online and offline
- The full assignment and submission workflow
- Personal portfolios of their work
- Scales with the number of learners
Teachers · ThingLink webTeacher tools in ThingLink
- AI-assisted authoring for teachers, with a curriculum-aligned prompt library for virtual field trips
- Unlimited assignments, class management, and submission review
- Analytics, administration, and content management
- SSO, onboarding, and technical support
Built for Secure, Standards-Aligned Deployment
Clean deployment
Distributed via Apple School Manager and managed through Jamf or Intune — it works within your existing MDM, with no new infrastructure to stand up.
Privacy by design
The free app needs no student accounts. Identity runs through your Managed Apple IDs, so there’s no new PII sprawl, and student work stays in school-managed accounts. Offline-first means less open-web exposure.
Standards & compliance
- Accessibility: WCAG / VPAT compliant
- Security: ISO/IEC 27001-certified. GDPR, FERPA, COPPA-compliant
- Regional data residency: Student data can be held in the EU or the US
Preparing Capable, Independent Learners for an Age of AI
Constructivist, inquiry-based learning, in which students create rather than consume, develops the foundational cognitive capacities: observation, classification, sequencing, analysis, and reflection. The capacities students build here are foundational to learning, and they are precisely what enables students to later engage with AI critically and constructively, as a collaborator rather than a substitute for their own thinking.
About ThingLink
ThingLink is a Finnish learning technology company connecting digital learning with authentic, real-world environments. We develop accessible, easy-to-use tools that help educators and learning designers create interactive and immersive learning experiences grounded in real places, processes and situations. Our tools support 2D images, 360° media and 3D captures, making complex information easier to explore and understand. Our AI-native tools transform existing text-based materials into visually engaging learning modules, with tasks and interactions designed to make professional knowledge and skills visible. ThingLink received the UNESCO ICT in Education Prize in 2018 and the Bett Award for Higher Education Digital Learning Product in 2023, and is featured in the Learning Cabinet following evaluation against its EdTech for Good Framework. With Tarina, we bring this experience to AI-free student creation on iPad, guided by a clear vision: technology should strengthen learners’ curiosity, agency and ability to understand and act in the world around them.
Activate Tarina for Your School
Already with ThingLink, or getting started — pick your path.
Download and test locally
Try Tarina for free
An Al-free student creation companion app for ThingLink.
- Free to download and use locally
- Works offline
- Projects are created and stored on the device
Connect to existing account
We already have a ThingLink school account
For homework and collaborative projects across subjects.
- Students see classroom folders for easy sharing
- Virtual tours and field trips built together
- Student work is backed up in the cloud
Activate a new school account
Get a price for
ThingLink + Tarina
New to ThingLink? Activate your account today.
- Al tools with controls for easy content creation
- Easily add student or educator seats as usage grows