Pinterest & Flickr
Pinterest is a useful tool, as we really do "put a pin" in "interesting" finds on the Internet. To foster learning, I usually go onto Facebook and skim through links, news feeds, and suggested sites. Those searches lead to useful memes or articles, especially on scientific finds, where I can share information via Pinterest. Websites typically contain Pinterest icons, this way I can direct students to anything from top technologies for college students to world news. I find learning to be informal yet informational when I can tell students that there is a real world application, and then we can discuss the content and apply it to classroom theory (Shellenbarger & Robb, 2013).
Flickr can be used for more than storing and sharing your iPhone pictures. Flickr provides students with a photo-narrative learning scheme (Kawka, Larkin, & Danaher, 2012). As with pinned images and sites, Flickr provides students with a visual of how theory and real-world applications merge. Students can learn image similarity, and therefore by grouping images together, they receive visual examples of a lesson. For example, if I am teaching about microscopic views of fungi, I can group these images I capture in class and place them online. It is like a picture library once I group together all of our visuals, and this can serve as a review to exams that are practical in nature.
To engage students, I would create a Pinterest and Flickr account for the course and monitor the activity. Pinterest is useful for engagement because students can "pin" any source that they feel aids their learning and share it with the whole class. Chances are, they will select a site that teachers and other students didn't think of. I would enable students to collaborate and add images to respective Flickr collections. However, having students caption their images helps them to understand what they are actually seeing. For example, if there is a picture of an amoeba, label the pseudopods.
To access learning using Flickr, I would create a visual/ image-based test. I already use images on exams, therefore Flickr Photo Quiz can be used as a sort of Jeopardy. Pinterest can be used to aggregate quizzes, like personality quizzes. Therefore, I would use Pinterest to house different sites that contain interactive quizzes. The objective of interactive quizzes are to provide the students with instantaneous feedback, and with that feedback, students keep attempting the assessments for higher scores and understanding (Xi, 2010). This repetition hopefully aids in long-term memory storage.
References
Kawka, M., Larkin, K. M., & Danaher, P. (2012). Creating Flickr Photo-Narratives with First-Year Teacher Education Students: The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Designing Emergent Learning Tasks. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 37(11). http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2012v37n11.4
Shellenbarger, T., & Robb, M. (2013). Pinstructive Ideas: Using a Social Networking Bulletin Board for Nursing Education. Nurse educator, 38(5), 206-209. doi: 10.1097/NNE.0b013e3182a0e5e7
Xi, X. (2010). Automated scoring and feedback systems: Where are we and where are we heading?Language Testing, 27(3), 291–300. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
The use of Pinterest and Flickr are great ideas. I chose Pinterest for my last technology that I would like to incorporate in my teaching. There are so many resources for educators to use now with the advancing technology, it is amazing. I like the idea of you using Pinterest for the interactive quizzes. Makes learning more interesting for students and increases student engagement.
ReplyDeleteI think these are valuable tools, however, instructors will need to monitor activity as social media and the Internet in general can be salty.
ReplyDeleteEducators of the twenty-first century now have the added responsibility of keeping abreast of a large amount of new technologies that are available for teaching and learning. I was not aware of Pinterest, but after reading your blog and doing a little research I realize that Pinterest is a social media platform for displaying favorite images, videos and much more; it is also a very flexible tool. Pinterest is a great educational tool since it is accessible across platforms. Once you create your board, you can invite the school community to interact by commenting, repining, or liking. Pinterest is excellent for fostering creativity, collaboration and reflection.
ReplyDeleteI like Pinterest because I do tell students to put a pin in certain thoughts. I also share memes quite often, as a lighter side to science. My concern with social media sites would surround privacy and netiquette. The class would have to have their own unique access, maybe a school-based username, too. Similar to Facebook, I don't want to know everything about certain users. But I was looking at other platforms that are class-friendly.
ReplyDeleteToo many tools and hard to catch up. I have not used pininterest, have always been curious about it though. Thank you for giving an intro, it will be useful
ReplyDeleteMany tools and it seems like not even each year then there's more new tools or updated versions.
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