What is Classroom?

Defining ‘classroom’, as I had used this word when first describing my project. Therefore, the following texts have been accessed for research.

Grabinger, R., & Dunlap, J. (2011). Rich environments for active learning: a definition. Research In Learning Technology, 3(2). doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v3i2.9606 Accessed 30/03/15

Grabinger, R. & Dunlap, J, use the acronym REAL’s (Rich Environments for Active Learning) rather than the term classroom or learning environment. As they suggest that “the phrase learning environment is broadly and carelessly used in educational literature to describe everything from schools to classrooms to computer microworlds to learning activities to air conditioning and furniture” p11

Defined as ‘comprehensive instructional systems that evolve from and are consistent with constructivist philosophies and theories’p5

“A REAL is not limited to any specific media , but instead an assortment of methods and ideas that help create an environment that promotes and encourages active learning.”.p11 Pinterest itself is not a learning environment, however when implemented within a wider scheme of work it can help to cultivate a ‘Rich Environment for Active Learning’

REAL’s

  1. promote study and investigation within authentic contexts; They identify that “Conventional instruction often utilizes simplified, decontextualized examples and problems, leading to inadequate understanding of and ability to apply the knowledge aquired. Students are not exposed to problems that make knowledge relevant to them.”p7 Pinterest offers links outside of a traditional library and allows them to see work by a multitude of professionals and amateurs. This is a real-world platform that operates external to the VLE and therefore is not necessarily seen as a ‘learning’ technology by the students. However, this means it is subject to external forces and can not be ‘controlled’ in the same way as a VLE, leaving students with links that have not been through a process of rigour.
  2. encourage the growth of student responsibility, initiative, decision making and intentional learning; One of their solutions is to “establish new goals for learning” p9 to develop “independent thinkers and learners who engage in life-long learning”p9 One of my goals when first introducing Pinterest was that students extend their learning into a deeper personal interest in the creative arts, that they would want to cultivate themselves rather than seeing research as compartmentalised within certain college based projects.
  3. cultivate collaboration among students and teachers; A learning environment should encourage collaboration, where “students learn not solely from experts and teachers, but also from each other.” Pinterest allows students to follow each others activity, and I have witnessed them showing each other pins when discussing their ideas together. Pinterest is a system, open to anyone who wants to join, meaning that my learning community is open to many others to have access and influence.
  4. utilize dynamic, interdisciplinary, generative learning activities that promote higher-order thinking processes to help students develop rich and complex knowledge structures; That “effective problem-solving and thinking are not based solely on motivation and knowledge of thinking strategies, but also on well-organized and indexed content knowledge” p9 this suggests that using Pinterest for curating research encourages problem solving. Another of my goals for utilising Pinterest was that I wanted the students to understand the subjective nature of the visual arts, meaning that they should not look to me for the answers instead seeking numerous solutions to the same problem by engaging with a very wide breadth of references.
  5. assess student progress in content and learning-to-learn within authentic contexts using realistic tasks and performances. The hope is that students will engage with visual information from the creative industries, start to cultivate an online identity based on preferences of of taste, as well as see the importance of display and self-promotion. I would then be able to know them better, Pinterest allows me to see where their ideas are coming from, to guide their choices and have visual springboards for face-to-face discussion.

Constructivism: “that we learn through a continual process of building, interpreting and modifying our own representations of reality based upon our experiences with reality”p12

 

http://edtechteacher.org/classroom-future-now-douglas-kiang-kicks-off-day-2-ettipad/ Accessed 30/03/15

Curriculum, Classrooms and Community. (a synopsis)

The curriculum of the future is – that allows students to be creators rather than just followers, celebrating individual strengths and giving them maps to guide towards building things that matter.

Where students of contemporary education structures are part of a DIY generation – choosing their own way to learn through various technology and networks.

That students need maps (e.g. Gantt charts) to guide them  managing their learning rather than a linear syllabus – where maps give us comfort and guidance. Allowing them to adapt and improvise.

The classrooms of the future – a hybrid of physical and digital extending the learning context and empowering individual voices, bringing the outside in and creating spaces for play.

The community of the future – the suggestion is that this should be a ‘web’, rather than a ‘wheel’ (where the teacher is in the centre), allowing students to build relationships, collaborate and negotiate. Creating a shared values through a self sustaining community that reinforces trust among individuals that rewards social behaviour. Students should be encouraged to own their successes and setbacks through the creation of safe spaces for failure.

However, teachers still hold a key position as they bring the tools to facilitate the collaboration. Their job is to understand and empower students by building relationships, providing the map and being the catalyst to create change and learning together.

 

 

Two-Step Flow and Pinterest

Katz E. (1957) The Two-Step Flow of Communication: An Up-To-Date Report on a Hypothesis. Political Opinion Quarterly, 21 (1), 61-78 http://dx.doi.org/10/1086/266687 accessed 2/3/2015

 

Teaching is a natural dichotic leader/follower relationship, and this has lead me to consider the two-step flow theory within the backdrop of Pinterest.

The ‘Two Step Flow of Communication’ hypothesis states that “ideas flow from radio and print to opinion leaders and from these to the less active sections of the population” This means that rather than the whole audience gaining influence from the media in equal amounts, the audience can be seen in multiple levels of exposure to the mass media, where those who have the most exposure pass on their understanding of the media to other members of an audience through a system of networks.

How is this relevant to Pinterest? –

The hypothesis suggested that “people were still most successfully persuaded by give-and-take with other people”, and that the audience was “networks of interconnected individuals through which mass communications are channeled.”,  As a social media Pinterest works through individuals and businesses wanting to store and share visual information. Networks of users ‘follow’ other users in a complicated web of influence.

The original hypothesis was based around a voting study in 1940 in America. The study had three findings, so how can these relate to Pinterest and using Pinterest in the FE classroom

  1. Personal influence has an impact on peoples opinions– rather than just an impact from the mass media. A teacher aims to have a significant impact on their students, guiding them through re-presenting information in the context of a learning journey.
  2. The personal influence flows from certain members of the audience (“opinion leaders”) who were more connected to the mass media to those who are not. Teachers at FE level generally have more experience of their subject matter than the students, and a repertoire of sources for research from diverse areas of the mass media.
  3. The relationship between opinion leaders and the mass media is more extensive than that of the rest of the population. FE students have, through their level of learning and their age, a smaller cultural capital. From my experience, even those who are interested in the media and the arts do not have a deep enough knowledge of the subject area to know where to start their research or how to turn this research into anything meaningful.

Using Pinterest allows me to be a self-designated opinion leader with my students being just some of my ‘followers’ by actively linking to my ‘board’. Katz, observes that opinion leaders are “influential at certain times and with respect to certain substantive areas by virtue of the fact that he is ’empowered’ to be so by other members of his group”, making me think about how teaching is empowered by students, that is is a symbiotic relationship.

In studying how doctors decide to adopt new drugs into their medical practice Katz, reports that the study focused on  “(1) a specific item, (2) diffusion over time (3) through the social structure of an entire community.” for me the item is Pinterest, the time frame is Sept 2014 – May 2015 and the community is my learning community.

Katz states it is important to consider not only at the main relationships within the group, also the “entire web of potentially relevant relationships”. For a study to be successful Katz suggests an investigation into “why integration is related to innovation”, concluding that a deeper integration into the wider relevant community (for me – the art, design and media community) allowed the opinion leaders to be “more in touch and more up to date” and therefore “feel more secure when facing the risks of innovation”. This is personally interesting as I have already identified that one of the reasons I like to use Pinterest is to keep up with trends and changes in the wider industry.

Katz, considers “The Various Roles of the Media”, and concludes that there is a distinction between “media that ‘inform’ and media that ‘legitimate’ decisions. I would speculate that Pinterest has more of an informing role for the students and a legitimising function for me. Where Pinterest is a primary media for many of the students, as they have not seen the visual ‘pin’ in any other location, whereas I am using Pinterest more as a secondary media to legitimise information through curating a collection to communicate a direction for their research.

Through consideration of the two-step flow communication model, within an ethnographic study there are a few objectives that could be considered =

  • Explore the relationship between myself and my students, perhaps classifying them into specific groups based on behaviour patterns.
  • Explore how these relationships might differ compared to those between myself and non student followers.
  • Explore how the online Pinterest relationship transfers into a classroom based, teacher/student relationship.
  • Explore the online relationship students have with me compared to others that they might ‘follow’ as other opinion leaders. Particularly as many of them follow each other.
  • Explore how the position of opinion leader might affect my performance as a teacher.

One potential negative identified by Katz is that “interpersonal relations are also sources of pressure to conform to the group’s way of thinking and acting as well as sources of social support”, therefore, it is important to consider the negative aspects of using this technology in the classroom as well as the perceived benefits.

What is Pinterest?

Dudenhoffer, C. (2012) “Pin it! Pinterest as a library marketing and information literacy tool.” College and Research Libraries News, 73 (6), 328-332.crln.acrl.org/content/73/6/328.full Accessed 23/02/15

As the title suggests Pinterest is defined as an “information literacy tool”p328 later as a “collection of visual images’ p330

The purpose for using Pinterest was:

For “reaching out to non-traditional learners in an accessible and appealing way”p328 (what they mean by ‘non-traditional’ is not specifically defined although later mentioned are “different kinds of learners and learning styles, such as visual, auditory, etc.”p331

Endevoring to “make information literacy interesting and applicable to all students”p330

Other features and benefits

  • Sorting and categorising of diverse material
  • Sharing information, (it is publicly viewable)
  • A research portal
  • The visual representations allow for quick retrieval thanks to notation and tagging, p329
  • for collecting material relevant to curricula to create classroom resources
  • The interface allows for an “easy juxtaposition of ideas”p331

The main conclusions were that the introduction of Pinterest led to students developing “both traditional information literacy skills and visual literacy skills”p331 and that the juxtaposition of ideas and “ease of of accessing Pinterest as a visual aid provide excellent opportunities for critical thinking and discussion.”p331

 

Hall C and Zarro M (2012) Pinterest: Social Collecting for #linking #using #sharing, JCDL’12 Proceedings of the 12th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital Libraries p417-418 ACM New York, USA doi 10.1145/2232817.2232919 accessed 01/03/15
Defining Pinterest as a “Social collecting website” that allows users to “annotate digital objects in their own personal collections”p417 through “collection, categorisation and representation of a digital object in a system that is accessible via the web”p417

That Pinterest in personal and public. Personal because collections are maintained using ‘idiosyncratic methods’ and public because these collections can be viewed by anyone (do you have to be a member to view??)

To explore what “social collecting”, they compare the features of Pinterest to more traditional library services because, “social collecting is indicative information organisation, use and sharing in a social web environment”p418

With a “user-centred perspective of organising or describing information resources in a digital library or website”p417

A system that allows users to “create and annotate surrogates of digital objects” p417 making it “easy to reuse and share images”p417, linking back to a source but not necessarily the original “as images may be used and reused several times on the web.”p417

It offers a demonstration of preference through; choice, inclusion, following, liking content and sending content to other members.

Through a system of indexing and abstracting, the process of choice is highlighted: “The Pinterest User is choosing an extremely small subset of objects from the Worldwide Web to collect, and some discrimination necessarily occurs”p418 These objects are then re-framed within a new context and a given a new narrative. Demonstrating a creative process.

These small sub-sets get re-pined by other Pinterest users and therefore they are choosing from an even smaller subset of objects, shrinking the pool of choice. Whereas those who pin from source are widening the pool.

All information chosen and then reframed by the user within a new context.

“The act of pinning is analogous to indexing and abstracting. The image is the surrogate the user chooses to represent her concept or object. Creating a pinboard and assigning it to a top-level category is analogous to defining a category in a hierarchy and placing items in it.”p418

 

Hall, C. and Zarro, M. (2012), Social curation on the website Pinterest.com. Proc. Am. Soc. Info. Sci. Tech., 49: 1–9. doi: 10.1002/meet.14504901189 accessed 01/03/15

A “social curation website” that combines ” social features and collecting capabilities”, (ibid) Pinterest communicates the metaphor of a being a pin board,  to ‘pin’ visual links to web content in one place, for retrieval at a later date. Alongside the facility for this pinboard to be shared with and viewed by an online audience.

Participatory web – “Where users actively create, evaluate and distribute information” – leading to a “great increase in the quantity and variety of social annotation and user-generated meta data.”

 

Linder R, Snodgrass C, & Kerne A. (2014) Everyday Ideation: All of my ideas are on Pinterest. CHI 2014, April 26-May 01 2014, Toronto, ON, Canada. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145.25556288.2557273 accessed 05/04/15

a visual medium of rich bookmarks used as a system for assemblage and appropriation, where objects are organised in a flow layout with objects aligned contiguously into columns.

Pinterest is a platform for everyday ideation, where ‘digital curators perceive themselves to be finding and and keeping information to form ideas.” p2411 Ideation is defined as “the creative process for generating ideas and exploring possibilities”p2411

“By everyday ideation, we mean an ongoing process in which curators look for, find, organize and return to meaningful information as a means of provoking and forming ideas that address practical and emotional needs.”p2411

Their participants reported using Pinterest to learn and combine ideas.

they identify curation as “an inherently creative activity.”p2412, and claim that the process of encountering new facts, concepts and ideas progressively increases one’s potential for realising creativity”p2411 That Pinterest allows creativity to be turned into an ‘everyday’ activity.

“Furthering engaging in learning and synthesis can transform everyday forms of creativity into more eminent ones”p2412

“Exercising creativity increases self-esteem and helps one learn to self-actualise”p2412 and “extrinsic motivation can foster creativity. For example, when a consequence is perceived as a bonus rather than a penalty, creativity may be positively impacted. the re-pin mechanism works as a consequential bonus to Pinterest users. It does not create a feeling of impending evaluation.”p2413 “re-pining accounts for 4 out of 5 pins”p2413

They observed that participants did not feel scrutinised as they pin and are more interested in the Pins themselves rather than where they came from”. p2416

“We argue that continued exposure to diverse content pinned by others perceived as ‘like me’ to a user encourages them to approach unfamiliar interests and try new things.”p2413

“We found that participants apply information-based ideation and creative thinking skills in seeking, collecting, analyzing and testing ideas from Pins”p2414

“The effects of social proof strongly influence a person’s perception, making unfamiliar activities seem achievable. In trying new things, people gain skills and expertise, key components for creativity”p2419

They observed that participants used the word ‘idea’ to describe the Pins they collected, meaning that “forming and presenting ideas is essential to how everyday ideators use Pinterest as a social medium of curation.” p2414 providing rich representations of many different ideas.

“The meaning and utility of these found objects change as people exercise creativity and invoke their ideas. Social perceptions of Pinterest help motivate everyday ideators, increasing their expertise and creativity.”p2417

“Repeated exposure to others Pins constitutes tacit social proof, making new goals and personally untested ideas appear achievable. p2416

“Participants used curation as a means to discover and articulate tastes and interests.”p2417 “People appropriate information to address life’s needs and use curation to plan, motivate and expand their interests.”p2418

“Pins posess visceral and informational value. For most participants a Pin’s image is most important. Images convey implicit information that is immediately understandable. p2419

“Participants reported taking fewer than five seconds to decide on what to pin. they rely on fast visual cognition when choosing and refinding.”p2419

 

Mittal S, Gupta N, Dewan P & Kumaraguru P. (2014) Pinned it! A Large Scale Study of the Pinterest Network CoDs’14 Proceedings of the 1st IKDD Conference on Data Sciences , pp1-10 http://precog.iiitd.edu.in/Publications_files/Pinterest-IKDD.pdf Accessed 21/05/15
Image based social bookmarking media, a promising conduit for the promotion of commercial activities.
Image based social network, interesting due to its rapid growth. Which they attribute to the imaged based nature of the service.
A service that is popular with commercial and non-commercial users

Interested in who uses it, and trying to predict gender through analysing user names. And privacy and security

Design was one of the most popular topics across users
5% of pins are uploaded by users as new images, 95% are pins from pre-existing web sources.

Zarro et al talked about how digital libraries and other organisations could take advantage of pinterest to create personal collections, incorporating their content, in their next piece of work they found that pinterest serves as infrastructure for repository building that supports discovery, collection, collaboration and publishing of content, especially for professionals.

Structure
User – identifiable by an avatar, user name, which is chosen by the user and can be anonymous and a optional description.
Board – collections of pins, named and organised by the user, arranged in a visual grid under the user information, identified by a name, a cover image and thumbnail images of the last few pins added by the user to that board.
Pins – the basic building blocks of the service, a pin is an image based digital object with a text based annotation attached, this annotation is editable by the user. Groups of pins are viewable through the grouping function of the board. Each pin also contains a link to the web source, from which is was taken, a pin it button, encouraging rep inning, a send button, so you can share this with another user, and a like button, to express interest without adding it to your Own pins.links to other boards from other users, that this pin features on, and recommendations to drive you into searching for similar objects. Plus a comments box

Social ties -follower /followee similar to twitter, repin share comment or like, similar to