Pinterest in Education

Oh no not another time sucking social networking site!! That’s what the common comment was when I first started hearing about Pinterest. For me Pinterest will always be the site that I learned about from my wife. I’m usually the one who is considered a techie but on this one she was light years ahead of me. After she had been “pinning” a while she explained the site to me and showed me around a bit. A lot of fashion & fancy houses was my take way from that first Pinterest experience. She sent me an invite and I poked around a bit and looked at some cool photography but I have to say I wasn’t super impressed. I get so much professionally out of Twitter I just sort of didn’t feel a need for something else. To me it just didn’t stack up with regard to return on investment (time). To be fair I hadn’t made the initial time investment as I had already done with Twitter.

I teach next to a 3 & 4 year old classroom and I knew the teacher (a good friend of my wife’s) was an avid Pinterest user as well. I talked to her about how she was using it and what she liked most about it. Over the next couple weeks she started sharing with me all these great ideas she had gathered from Pinterest and was now using in her classroom. She started sharing stuff she was doing in her classroom (mostly art based projects) on Pinterest as well and has now created a PLN of like minded teachers. How cool! I even suggested that she do an in-house PD about Pinterest which she did. It was very well received.

I also started seeing other people on Twitter sharing ways they were using Pinterest in education. The folks over at #KinderChat have set up a really cool Pinterest blog directory. Definitely check it out!

I do think it’s a cool way to graphically organize and present information in an accessible way. Here is a cool infographic I saw recently on the Infographic Labs website describing Pinterest.

A take away for me with regard to Pinterest is that even though I don’t really find it useful doesn’t mean that others won’t. Also as it grows and evolves it may become something that is more of a fit for me, or maybe it won’t. Whether it does or doesn’t won’t change the fact that it’s a new an innovative way to share information. Furthermore who knows how it will contribute to the next, 3rd, or even 33rd new technology down the line that will change how information is collected, organized and shared.

Are you using Pinterest in education? If you are please chime in and share how you are doing so.