The possibilities are endless with Pinterest

The possibilities ARE endless with Pinterest. After reading Stephen Abram's article Pinterest and Education, which was a summary of an article written by Best Colleges Online, and after doing some exploring of my own, I came up with a list of my top possibilities.

Classroom Ideas:

1. Collect ideas for organizing and decorating your class or library.
2. Pin great lessons.
3. Collect ideas for art projects or research projects.
4. Pin great education related blogs.
5. Create boards for writing prompts.

Web 2.0 Ideas

1. Pin Web 2.0 tools that I would like to try out
2. Pin great educational technology blogs

At this point, I see myself using Pinterest as a way to organize the inspiring ideas that I find online, both for professional and personal interests. I do not, however, see myself getting students to use Pinterest, as I have found that not all material is appropriate for elementary age students, and maybe not even for high school students, in the school setting, for that matter.

And yes, it is true! Pinterest is addicting... you could spend hours exploring this site...

Social Bookmarking

Last year I set up a Delicious account to bookmark important information on the internet. I find it to be very useful for when I am teaching and I need to access my bookmarks on the laptop that is connected to the Smartboard.  It's great to have access to them on the web. One problem that I encountered when I wanted to access my Delicious account on a network computer though,  was that the network wouldn't allow me to do so. Apparently "gambling" came up as a key word when I tried to access the Delicious site. I don't think that too many things are blocked in our district as we can access Blogger and Youtube. However, there must be a few words that have been chosen for the filters and "gambling" is one of them.

I never considered the "social" side of the Delicious bookmarking service. It really came to light to me when I was setting up my Pinterest account and browsing other people's boards. This is what Delicious is all about, too: sharing good links.  I think that I will take the time to investigate other people's bookmarks on Delicious. As we progress through this course I am finding more and more information on the web that I would like to be access at a later date and  I am now making good use of my Delicious account.

When I was reading the textbook Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World, by Pam Berger and Sally Trexler I came across this list:

Six Social Bookmarking Strategies for Students OR Best Practices for Social Bookmarking

1. Go beyond just searching others' social bookmarking collections. Locate and tag Web sites that support your interests, assignments, projects, and hobbies.
2. Look at others' bookmarks and tags and use the "copy this" feature as you encounter great links in other peoples' collections. That way they are incorporated into your collection for easy access, including any annotations and sticky notes, if they are public.
3. Use the advanced features, such as highlighting and annotating to enhance your bookmark collection.
4. Share your insights by adding sticky notes to links that you find valuable and tell others how and why you would use them.
5. Subscribe to interesting tags and others users' collections. Let the information come to your desktop.
6. Be daring! Add your Diigo or del.icio.us links or tag cloud to your blog, wiki, or Web site. Share with an even wider audience than just the social bookmarking network.

(Berger, P. & Trexler, S., 2010, p. 55)

I was interested to read about the sticky note and annotation functions in the Diigo bookmarking platforms. Even though I did not identify exploring the Delicious bookmarking platform as part of my inquiry, I am going to take a closer look at my account to see if something like this is available with Delicious and to see how I can maximize the organization of my bookmarks. I will also continue to build my Pinterest boards.

Keeping organized in this world of digital information is key and I hope to be able to do so!


Works cited:

Berger, P. and Trexler, S. (2010). Choosing Web 2.0 tools for learning and teaching in a digital world. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

I'm pinning on Pinterest

I signed up for a Pinterest account a couple of days ago. I've been intrigued by Pinterest for a number of months, but not having a Facebook account was holding me back. Now that I've signed up for Facebook, it was easy to sign up for Pinterest. Thanks for the invitation, Lisa!

It was easy to follow the steps to sign up. I signed in with my Facebook ID and then followed the tutorial to follow some people on Pinterest. I later went back and removed these people, because I didn't necessarily want to follow them. I've set up a few boards, some for professional interests and some for personal interests. Because Pinterest is linked in with Facebook (and Twitter) you can search your Facebook friends to see who is on Pinterest and then follow them if you choose. I guess that this would make sense because often friends have similar interests. I noticed that a couple of my friends on Facebook have their Pinterest boards linked to their Facebook accounts. I need to figure out if new "pins" are transmitted to all Facebook friends when this link is set up or if it is only when the person chooses to share certain "pins" that this actually happens. For me, right now, this option is turned off.

Here is a quick video about how to sign up for Pinterest and start pinning.

How To Pinterest from Braid Creative on Vimeo.

I love how the "bookmarks" are set up on virtual bulletin boards. It makes for a very visually appealing presentation. I can see how people can spend a lot of time perusing the millions of boards in Pinterest and  I can see that a lot of "repinning" (where people see a pin on someone else's board and pin it to one of theirs) is happening. It has recently come to my attention via an artist that I follow that not everything is properly attributed on Pinterest. This artist's concern started a lively discussion on her blog, here. Pinterest does have a system in place where the pins are linked to the original site, but this can break down in the repinning process. They have written up a page of pin etiquette that outlines the rules or guidelines that ethical pinners should follow. This idea of ownership and attribution is important and especially so for teacher-librarians.

I am going to spend the next few days adding to my boards and finding some people to follow on Pinterest. I would also like to investigate the educational applications of Pinterest and will be reading this blog post written by Stephen Abram. I do fear, however, that I will be sidetracked a number of times on my quest to use Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, just as Lenora talked about here. This being said, that is what happened this morning and I ended up learning about some photo editing sites from Joyce on the UBC Vista website and also discovered a gem of an animated film on this blog post (nominated for an Oscar this year) that I will share here. ETA: I see that the video is now private, but I will share the trailer for the iPad app. Teacher-librarians will love this bookish video.


The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore iPad App Trailer from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.