Ideas Sparked by ThingLink! How to Inspire Students with Immersive Storytelling

Louise Jones September 8, 2025

✨ ThingLink Idea Spark: The Power of a Story – Immersive Storytelling for Students

This immersive lesson helps students strengthen their storytelling skills by connecting setting, character, and imagination. Through exploration of Granny Susanna's world (set in Italy), learners practice prediction, descriptive writing, and narrative construction. The experience encourages empathy for characters, sparks creativity, and supports collaboration as students share ideas and co-create storylines. It is a flexible activity that builds confidence in creative writing while showing how digital tools can enrich the storytelling process.

The character here can be recreated any fictional format, the context can be completely adapted to be culturally relevant and relatable.

Creating Immersive Storytelling Experiences: Tools and Techniques

For the creation of this immersive storytelling project, a combination of digital tools was used. ThingLink was employed to design and connect the interactive scenes, providing students with an engaging narrative pathway. Immersive environments were generated using the 360 Image generation tool in ThingLink with carefully crafted prompts to recreate the warm and realistic atmosphere of a grandmother’s home.

The main character, Granny Susanna, was created in 3D through MESHY, using a targeted prompt to define appearance and personality. It is recommended that prompts are always adapted to the specific context and cultural background to ensure relevance and inclusivity.

Finally, Pixabay was used for background music and sound effects, offering free resources that enhance the immersive and evocative quality of the experience.

• Experience Title: The Power of a Story: Granny Susanna’s Mysterious Letter
• Theme or Subject: Creative Writing, Storytelling, Imagination, Character Exploration
• Age or Stage: Upper Primary – Secondary (ages 8–16, adaptable)
• Experience Length: Medium (20–40 minutes, according to student level)

Experience Flow Entry Point

Scene 1 – Granny Susanna’s Garden
Learners step into an immersive view of Granny Susanna’s garden, with birds singing and flowers in bloom.
Focus: Students make predictions about who Granny Susanna is and what kind of story might grow from this setting.

Exploration (Icon or Hotspot Placements)

Scene 2 – Granny Susanna in the Kitchen
Inside the kitchen, Granny Susanna appears and introduces herself warmly, explaining her love of stories.
Focus: Learners begin to build empathy and curiosity by getting to know the character.

Scene 3 – Granny Susanna’s Hobbies & Passions
Students explore her living room, filled with objects that reveal her life and interests.

• Photo album hotspot – flip-through images with prompt: “Whose stories do these pictures tell?”
• Knitting basket hotspot – audio of needles clicking with prompt: “What if this scarf had magical powers?”
• Clock hotspot – ticking sound with prompt: “What moments in time might Granny Susanna want to remember or change?”
• Dog hotspot – resting in a chair with prompt: “If the dog could talk, what story would it tell?”
  Focus: Learners connect objects to imagination, with each hotspot sparking potential story seeds.

Scene 4 – The Mysterious Letter

A dramatic shift occurs as learners discover a sealed envelope glowing slightly on Granny Susanna's writing desk. She records a video diary, whispering with intrigue:
"My darlings, you will never believe what has just happened to me. Today, I received a letter from someone I don't know. And yet, it feels important. I must find out who it is from and why they wrote to me…"

• Hotspot – The Letter: partially opens to reveal only, “Dear Susanna, You don’t know me yet, but…”

Focus: Students predict and create:

• Who sent the letter?
• Why now?
• What mystery is unfolding?

Challenge / Deepening

• Students write three possible continuations of the letter.
• They decide whether Granny Susanna’s story develops into a mystery, adventure, or fantasy.
• Optionally, learners design their own “mysterious object” to add into Granny Susanna’s world.

Reflection / Exit Point

• A question-mark hotspot appears near Granny Susanna’s rocking chair.
• Text + Audio prompt: “Every story begins with a spark. What was your spark today? How did Granny Susanna’s world inspire your imagination?”
• Students share reflections in writing, audio, or short video notes.

Support & Flexibility

• Resources Needed: Photos of a garden, kitchen, living room, and a letter on a desk. Audio for dog, birdsong, knitting, clock ticking, suspenseful music, plus Granny Susanna’s recorded voice for introductions and diary entry.
• Support: Provide sentence starters such as “The letter might say…” or “The clock reminded her of…”.
• Extension: Students create a branching narrative ThingLink of what happens after the letter.

Outcomes

• Communication: Students build descriptive writing and narrative predictions.
• Collaboration: Learners co-construct story continuations.
• ICT for Learning: Students see how immersive tools amplify storytelling.
• Knowledge Construction: Learners understand how settings, characters, and objects combine into a narrative.
• Self-Regulation: Activities scaffold from observation to imagination to creation.

Acknowledgements

With our thanks and hat-tip to Claudia Fisanotti LinkTree