Pinterest is an online tool for creating and sharing visual boards of collections. Items added to boards are called “pins”. Users can categorize and circulate their boards as well as create boards for collaborating with other users. In order to explore boards and pins of similar interest, users can follow other pinners to find pins to save to their own boards. There is also the option to upload pins directly from websites. As a digital curation tool, Pinterest focuses on collecting information, enabling users to gather content around particular themes. It is highly visual with the ability to annotate a graphic representation of the resource. The resource may be an image in itself, such as an infographic, or include a link to the originating website. In one course reading, Leona Ungerer discusses Digital Curation as a Core Competency in Current Learning and Literacy: A Higher Education Perspective. She suggests Pinterest as one of many tools that might be used in a curational learning process; each tool offering different features that supports the process. Although Pinterest does not have all of the features suggested for digital curation as a learning tool, there are features that support some of the stages. From a user perspective, Pinterest is accessible on multiple devices, free, and easy to use. Using the application as a learning tool is a new concept for me. Although I’ve mastered the “collection” aspect of the process, how it aids learning depends heavily on what is done with the information. It is easy to add items to boards and never think about them again, and challenging to sort through a large number of pins unless they are well organized on themed boards. With a number of boards comes the challenge of cross referencing pins between themes. However, there is a search feature that allows users to find pins on specific topics either on their own boards or others. To see how I’ve begun to use Pinterest to collect EdTech information, follow my EdTech board. (Note: A Pinterest account is required to view this or other Pinterest boards.)
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What's this about?Documenting my exploration of Ed Tech and how it applies to the field of Adult Education. These are my Ang-ventures. ...see more Archives
April 2017
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