The Truth About Pinterest

Pinterest was a hot topic last year in the tech integration group I attend each month. Of course the group consists mostly of females, so the men in the group gave us a hard time about "girlie" Pinterest. Last spring, I wrote a post on Pinterest giving a brief descriptor and links to ways it is being used in education. When I attended the iPad training at Essdack this past Friday, I learned that Pinterest is also popular in Europe, but an average 85% of the users are men and they are mostly business men! I was shocked and a little skeptical of this statistic, so I decided to do a little digging on this matter. I discovered an interesting infographic comparing Pinterest use in the US vs. the UK.  I found some amazing facts:

• The male and female usage ratio in the UK is fairly even (56% to 44%), while the US is top heavy on female users (83% to 17%).
• The top audience interest in the UK is Venture Capital; in the US crafts is the top interest.
• UK users of Pinterest are wealthier than US Pinterest users.  (Makes sense seeing as their main interest is capital and ours is crafts.)

After exploring some of these differences, I wondered what changes have taken place since last spring in the usage of Pinterest in education. This infographic grabbed my attention as it even shows how colleges are using Pinterest both inside and outside of the classroom.

Here is another resource I found in my perusing today - Pinterest Cheat Sheet
“{12 Days: 12 Tools} Tool 8 Pinterest Cheat Sheet” by Dr. Kimberly Tyson was originally published on Learning Unlimited.

Personally, I like the visual aspect of Pinterest.  The boards and images appeal to my visual learning style.  It is a good tool for sharing information and ideas.  If I were still teaching English or in the library setting, I would definitely use this tool to share new books, websites for projects or research, student projects and more.  I do, however, have two frustrations with Pinterest.  The first is the number of clicks to takes for me to actually get to a pinned website.  I click on the image, but then a little window pops up with the image and comments.  I have to click the image again if I want to go to the actual website, providing the pin is linked to the website.  The second is I can't embed a board onto my blog or website.  Will I stop using Pinterest?  No.  It serves the purpose of sharing information in a visual format and for some of my teachers this works best for their learning style.

To view my Pinterest boards, go to http://pinterest.com/socdownload/

How are you using Pinterest to help you in the classroom?  Post a response in the comment box below.

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