I know I’m all about “technology” and “social media” but anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a huge FaceBook user. I’ve actually been on the fence regarding whether I really even want to keep my account. For some reason, even for professional use, it just hasn’t made it’s mark on me as much as Twitter. I think the difference for me is that I love being able to quickly check in and check out and to share my thoughts and read everyone else’s shared thoughts without having the boundaries that FaceBook imposes.
I’ve been playing around with Pinterest and I like it, but it was missing something for me and didn’t really capture my attention. What has captured my attention,however, is Learnist . Gigaom.com referred to Learnist as “Pinterest for Educators” and essentially, that’s what it is and why it’s meaningful to me. It allows me to connect to other educators and learners in a new way.
I’ve been spending most of my time on Learnist lurking on its iPad app (it doesn’t allow updates to your board yet – but soon I hear) but I am starting to interact more with Learnist and have just started on my own board. What’s great about building a board is not only can you add any media you can think of to it, but you can easily add it to your own board, making the entire experience very open and collaborative (you can also reference other boards, ‘like’ posts and comment on them as well in addition to a dozen other types of interactions) . For educators in any domain (K-12, corporate, community…) it provides an easy way to create learning spaces that allow learners to share and interact.
Like I said, I’ve just started on my own board, and will probably create a few because it’s so easy and kind of addictive and fun to share. The only thing lacking for me right now is an updated iPad app that allows me to edit my board and Twitter integration (but @farbood assures me it will be happening soon). Once that does happen, it could be my new favorite app.
