Teach Your Children.

Teach Your Children.: EBSCOhost

     This article only mentions Pinterest in passing, but it suggests a powerful point; We should be using social media to promote, share and teach STEM curriculum.  When you search STEM on Pinterest, hundreds of pins appear, and quite a few of them are from Teachers Pay Teachers.  Pinterest acts as a twitter(allowing you to follow) a bookmark (allowing you to save) and a search engine (allowing you to find exactly what you are looking for.  These components are an educator's dream because it opens up so many opportunities to find good ideas.  

     This article also suggests that Pinterest acts as a tool to help promote the investigative learning of our students.  Now that we are in a technological age, we can not continue to teach without the use of technological tools.  Pinterest is a tool that allows teachers to accomplish much more in terms of finding good ideas and sharing them with other teachers.  

Teach Your Children. (2014). International Journal of Metalcasting, 8(2), 5. 

Cool Tools, Social Media, and Curriculum

Cool Tools, Social Media, and Curriculum: EBSCOhost

     This article mainly serves as a short abstract that directs readers where to explore for ideas using technology in the classroom.  The thing about this article is it has so many links in it, it really might as well be its own Pinterest board.  Pinterest takes embedded links to the next level by intriguing readers with their visual component.  This engagement is what keeps people coming back to Pinterest, and what will keep students engaged in the classroom.  

Troutner, J. (2012). Cool Tools, Social Media, and Curriculum. Teacher Librarian, 39(4), 48-50.

Techspotting.

Techspotting.: EBSCOhost

     This article by Jody and Tim Green suggest some different technological tools to help cipher through the mountains of information found on the internet.  The nice thing about Pinterest is that it is customizable.  The authors themselves have 2 education boards they used, one for public use, and one for collaborative use.  Boards can have different settings, such as public or private, meaning that anything you pin can be seen by others, or you can set a board for private and it will only be seen by you.  You can also have personal boards, where you are the sole contributor, or collaborative boards, where one can invite those they follow on Pinterest and all those invited can pin to the collaborative board.  (This would be perfect in the classroom!) 

     

     They also mention a few ways that Pinterest can be used in the classroom by both teachers and students.  The beauty of Pinterest is that it can be used by anyone on any computer, tablet or smart phone.  With the rise of BYOD classrooms, and tablet availability, it is not unreasonable to assume that all students will soon have access to Pinterest via apps or through the website.  

Green, J., & Green, T. (2014). Techspotting. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To Improve Learning, 58(1), 11-12.

TO PIN or NOT TO PIN.

TO PIN or NOT TO PIN.: EBSCOhost

     This article dives into why people and companies want to use Pinterest. Maybe it is because in 2012 it had 20 MILLION monthly users, and in 2013, 70 MILLION, (http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/pinterest-stats/#.U40aIJROrSY) which means it is growing- and fast.  Shirley Rowe, the author of this article suggests that Pinterest is the new deal for Career Practitioners because it is immensely popular, its visual aspect appeals to the younger generation, and it is simple and easy to use.  The article goes on to describe all of the ways Pinterest can be used to share good ideas.  

Some of those good ideas look like this...

Share Resources

Track Websites you've viewed

Connect with other career professionals

DEVELOP LESSON PLANS

Build and develop your brand

Engage with people

Connect socially

Broaden your portfolio

Research Employers of Interest

Create a reading list

Follow Trends

Learn New Skills

Maintain a positive Online Presence

These reasons above are EXACTLY why we should be using Pinterest in the classroom.  Exposing students to this tool could make a huge impact on how they find, sort and interpret data they find on the internet.  

Rowe, S. (2013). TO PIN or NOT TO PIN. Career Planning & Adult Development Journal, 29(3), 45-56.

Pinterest as a Tool: Applications in Academic Libraries and Higher Education.

Pinterest as a Tool: Applications in Academic Libraries and Higher Educatio...: EBSCOhost

     This article is written by librarians from the University of Regina in Canada.  They describe how they launched a Pinterest account for their library and discuss some issues regarding copyright and Pinterest.  Turns out that there is a script certain websites, such as Flickr, Etsy, and Kickstarter, can use to prevent images from that website from being repinned.  Other companies, such as Penguin Books and Random House have encouraged the repinning of their book covers because it acts as free promotion for their products.  The library encourages pinners to evaluate copyright before repinning.

     While I understand the importance of copyright, I feel like because Pinterest is used to share ideas, it acts as a promotional feature.  Companies are creating Pinterest accounts because they WANT others to repin their material.  I feel like in general, pinners are pretty safe from copyright, unless they go a round about way to add an image to an imageless site to be repinned.  (like I did.)  But even here, one just needs to make sure that the image they use is licensed for reuse.

Hansen, K., Nowlan, G., & Winter, C. (2012). Pinterest as a Tool: Applications in Academic Libraries and Higher Education. Partnership: The Canadian Journal Of Library & Information Practice & Research, 7(2), 1-11.

Text, Twitter and Tweet: This Time Im Pinning to Learn.

Text, twitter and tweet: This Time Im Pinning to Learn.: EBSCOhost

     This is a short and sweet article that outlines a teacher's practical use of Pinterest to help her find more ideas for her classroom.  Below is a quote which sums up what Pinterest is all about.


"The picture is a screenshot of some of the pins
on my drama and literacy board. I can also use the
link to follow the person who originally pinned the
link and then I can see all the other things they have
pinned onto education boards. One click leads to
another, one resource to another idea, one classroom
to another, and suddenly a picture of classes,
concepts and activities starts to emerge."

     If Twitter and the Bookmarking tool got together and had a baby, it would be Pinterest.  Because anyone with a Pinterest account has the ability to follow and be followed (like Twitter) it creates a lot of connections with people, which fosters this new hub for sharing ideas.  The visual aspect of Pinterest also makes it so much more ascetically pleasing than Twitter.  It is easy to see, just from the image and 140 character description, whether it is worth my time or not.  Twitter and Google searches fail to connect everything with an image, and it takes one a lot longer to shuffle through to find exactly what one is looking for.  Twitter and Google also do not allow you to save material in a way that is easy to come back to.  The sorting capabilities of Pinterest is making every Type A personality person geek out.  (These are the people with Pinboards solely devoted to organization.)  This is why Pinterest is the new ultimate sharing tool of the internet.

McDermot, S. (2013). Text, twitter and tweet: This Time I'm Pinning to Learn. Practically Primary, 18(3), 36.

Learning Beyond The Classroom: Evaluating The Use Of Pinterest In Learning

Learning beyond the classroom: evaluating the use of Pinterest in learning ...: EBSCOhost

     This article was written in September of 2013 and discussed a case study where a professor used Pinterest in their introductory anthropology class in an attempt to increase student understanding of the content.  The professor taught a 10 week class and so set up 10 different pin-boards, each with 10 pins that supplemented the students' weekly readings.  

Pros and Cons (from Students' perspective) 

Pros

- Useful for studying

- Interesting and intriguing

- Liked the Visual Aspect

- Could be linked across various forms of social media

Cons

- Could not pin all things found on the internet*

- Too much material to read everything

*Because Pinterest is a visual web bookmarking tool, it has to have an image, video, or gif to be pinned.  To get around unpinnable material, I took these articles (which have no image), shared them through blogger, and posted them with an image that was labeled on Google images as free for reuse.  I then pinned my articles to by pinboard.  While this is a round about way to do this, it has allowed me to create a blog, which might get more activity as others repin these articles, so that I might continue posting and reblogging about different educational topics.  

     The 3 biggest points that the author concluded was that Pinterest helped develop students' critical thinking skills because of its non linear and investigative nature, was shared across networks through Facebook and Whatsapp, and was shared with family and friends, which promoted an ongoing learning process.  

Pearce, N., & Learmonth, S. (2013). Learning beyond the classroom: evaluating the use of Pinterest in learning and teaching in an introductory anthropology class. Journal Of Interactive Media In Education, 1-10.