Pinterest

I created a Pinterest account a few weeks ago, and I have to be honest, the main reason for doing this was to tick it off the list of E-learning things I had to do as part of the course. Everything that has been suggested to us up until now has been great for engaging students in tasks, but I have been really short on time recently, and didnt give this one much of a go. I like to have time to be able to figure out how each resource serves to improve the standard of my delivery to students, and how they can get the most out of it in a sport specific way.

Anyway, tonight was the night when I decided to get to grips with this, and I have to admit, it was a bit of a frustration at first! Mistake number one was not eating before attending the after-college course - I suffer terribly with hunger rage! Mistake number two was leaving it so long, because I had forgotten a lot of the reasons why 'Web 2.0' tools are relevant to learning. If I'd have done this when we first learnt about Web 2.0 it would have cemented my understanding of it, but as it was it just seemed like a pointless waste of cutting and pasting.

Thankfully, now I have eaten, and had a couple of hours to reflect (I feel like I'm doing so much reflecting recently that I'm in danger of resembling a mirror!), I have begun to understand the beauty of this tool. The focus of my Pinterest is as a fitness resource for one of my teaching groups. The premise of their unit is fitness testing and training, so I have put together a number of sites that are reputable sources of information (there's a lot of rubbish on the internet, as it turns out!). This suits the unit as there are loads of different considerations that the students needs to remember, such as programming information, pictures and videos giving ideas for exercises, different goals that clients may have and how to meet them, as well as how to test the progress of a training programme by using fitness tests.

So, how does a Pinterest benefit the students? Well, the idea of all Web 2.0 technology is that it provides opportunities for interaction and contribution between many individuals. This is exactly what Pinterest supplies. At its most basic level, it provides students with a 'list' of resources, without it looking like a list. This in itself makes it a more pleasing experience when searching for information. But beyond this, students are able to have their own input and collaborate with one another. The idea is that they comment on the sites that are pinned there, either by critiquing the information they read and adding their opinions, or highlighting relevant information to help their collegues (peer sharing), or hopefully in many other ways that they think of, that I, as of yet, have not! As Will Richardson points out in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms "(weblogs) demand interaction". Any opportunity to increase learner engagement, collaboration and participation in class discussion is welcome as far as I am concerned!

As always, I will introduce this resource to my students, and see what they think of it, and how effective it is....

http://pinterest.com/binzyg/fitness-testing-and-training/