Pinterest consists of a lot of strange words that do not make sense outside of the Pinterest website, for example "pin", "board", "pinner", "bookmarklet" and many more. So my first dilemma was which words to define and which to just use in context and hope the reader would understand the meaning in the context of the sentence. I chose to define "pin" and "board" because if the reader did not understand those two words they would be lost for the rest of the handout. I also defined "bookmarklet" within the context of the sentence because I think that word is made up.
Another issue that I encountered was whether or not to include how to make a pin. In my social use of Pinterest I have never created my own pin but when I considered how a teacher may want to use it I thought that creating a pin could be very useful. So I then had explore how to make a pin and the benefits of this feature of Pinterest. It was fairly easy to make a pin but to make a pin that was connected to an actual website with content was a little more difficult. When I am using Pinterest to find recipes or lesson ideas I find pins much more helpful when they are linked to actual content on a website and not just an image. I briefly brush over how to do this in my hand out and hopefully I will have time to talk about this in my explanation. I do think this is an important thing to know but not essential when learning to use Pinterest, this would be something I would include in the second lesson if that were an option.
My last challenge in creating the handout was figuring out which images would be the most helpful and most productive to include. If I had unlimited pages I would have just walked people through entirely with screen shots but we were limited to two pages. So I tried to pick images that I could use text boxes to explain multiple things. I ended up with 4 images and all except for one has at least 2 text boxes.
Overall this assignment was much more difficult than I first anticipated but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could learn about a website that I already use and felt pretty comfortable with. I have attached my handout below, I hope it is self explanatory but if you have any questions please let me know!!
Your flier is great, looking forward to seeing it soon!
ReplyDeleteSarah, this is just what Rory and I were hoping to see. With your document here for reference, you raise a thoughtful series of questions about how to organize a presentation on a topic...what do you think your audience needs to know? What do YOU need to know in order to make that presentation? You define the space between what you yourself needed to know to navigate the site, and what you conjecture that others, lacking your background on Pinterest, might want to know, which winds up being more than you knew yourself. In this sense, your nicely-detailed account of your planning process shows how, as you contemplate teaching about a subject, that you are forced to look at things through someone else's eyes.
ReplyDeleteThis, in turn, makes me think about how challenging it can sometimes be for veteran teachers to be mentors...they accumulate experience that is contextualized by any number of factors, make meaning from all of this, put it into practice again and again...and it can be really hard to step back and answer specific questions about why I did THIS. One of the many reasons why MAC is blessed by teachers who are not only willing but are ABLE to engage in this process of unwinding.
I had no idea pinterest was like that! This assignment really showed us how we can learn things from something we thought we knew very well. I might have to go and investigate this thing we call Pinterest a little bit further.
ReplyDeleteI have to echo Eliza...your flyer is awesome. It's quite eye catching and a pleasure to read. I also worked with pinterest for this assignment...but unlike you, I was coming from absolutely no experience with it at all. Perhaps having experience with it ahead of time makes it easier to get more out of it. Almost like this echos the theme of several of the classes that "the rich get richer". I have a long way to come before I could get the same value from pinterest.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the perspective!