Pinterest: What's in it for you?

Pinterest started two years ago sort of like a bulletin board for sharing ideas. In the last year, it has become a growing addiction amongst people for sharing ideas and good resources. Newly engaged members are sharing wedding planning ideas, moms/dads are sharing parenting resources and ideas, teachers are using it to brainstorm lesson plans, and corporations are all beginning to take advantage of Pinterest. It's much more visual than other social networks and has all of the elements that many of the other ones do. You can comment on other people's pins, you can re-share their pins, and you can "network" with both people you know and those you don't because of a common interest.

How does Pinterest work?

1. Right now Pinterest is only by invitation. In today's world everything starts that way. Gmail, Facebook, etc. You can request an invite or you can be invited by somebody else. 2. Once you are in the pinning begins.

Pinning & Repinning

• You create boards and then you put pins on those boards.

What's a Board?

• The topics for the boards can be general like food, lesson planning, or adventures. Or they can be very specific like 100th day of school, presidents, etc.

What's a Pin?

• Then comes putting the pins onto the boards. There are three ways you can add pins yourself.

• You can Upload a photo of something you want to share. Perhaps something you have done. Then write a description. There is a character limit of 500 characters, but most things you can stay within that count.
• The other method is putting in a website address (like if you want to link to your blog or another website). It will look for images on that site and then you write a description and pin.
• The other is by adding the pin it button to your bookmark bar and as your are searching the web when you have something to share you can click on that link. Here are directions on how to add it.

Following and Repinning

• The other part is finding people to follow and repinning items.

• • When you find someone you can either follow all of their boards or you can select individual boards to follow.
  • After you have found people you can not only see what they have been pinning, but also can repin items they have shared. When you repin, you'll have the same 500 character count and you can either leave their description or create your own. You can also tag people in a post.

• • You can also like items without repinning. This means that they won't be categorized, but just show up under your likes.
  • If you link your Facebook or Twitter Account with Pinterest then you can find people on those networks to follow.
  • Pinterest is sort of like Social Bookmarking meets Twitter, but visual.

How is Pinterest being used?

Zoomsphere did a look into the top brands using Pinterest.

Examples of Schools using Pinterest

Denver University- College http://pinterest.com/ducollege/ and Graduate School http://pinterest.com/dugrad/

They have created boards to help create collaboration and explore inspiration for their students. They explore showing off faculty accomplishments and research.

George Fox University - http://pinterest.com/gfu/

They have used it to visually show pictures of their campus, tell stories about who they are, feature students, and feature alumni.

Drake University- http://pinterest.com/drakeuniversity/

They use Pinterest to show pictures of bulldogs (their mascot), room decor ideas, and study aboard ideas. They are not only using it to feature the school, but engage their audiences. They provide information for current students like Study aboard ideas, but also take into account the perspective student and what the accomplishments of the school are. It's a hard balancing act of engaging both potential, current, and past constituents. They are following the model that it's not just about who we are, which makes Pinterest so engaging.

What are some of the ways that schools can use Pinterest?

For teachers:

Collaboration

Teachers are beginning to use Pinterest as a way of brainstorming and collaborating ideas for specific topics or ideas. If you wanted an idea of how to celebrate the 100th day of school then there a tons of boards with content about the 100th day. Or perhaps specific topic areas such as the Harlem Renaissance or Colonial America.

With your students

You can also use it as a teaching tool to provide specific information in a visual way or a supplemental resources for projects or topic areas. To Get the ideas flowing: 30 inspiring ideas for teachers 37 ways teachers should use Pinterest

Schools

Think about the kinds of things you are posting. You want it to be engaging to drive people to follow you and repin what you have to post.

Resources

Share helpful information to parents and students. College counseling could share resources to Gap Year Experiences, Applying to Colleges, Colleges Students have been accepted to or Financial Aid. Think about the information that your parents and students might like to see and share that.

News clippings

Share information about your school that you post on your website or if it is posted elsewhere. Pinterest is built on visuals so make sure there is a visual element.

Showcase

Showcase your faculty, staff, students, parents, and alumni. Don't feature all of them, but feature things that make them stand out or are interesting. Pinterest is not about self-promotion, but is rather about sharing ideas. So showcase things you think others would find interesting. Maybe did you knows? or Unknown things about your School.

What are some of the advantages of using Pinterest?

• Engagement with other people
  • As a school you are building relationships with other schools, students, parents. You have the opportunity to build links back to your website and drive traffic. You also have the potential to reach audiences you might not have reached in normal methods.
  • Teachers have the opportunity to meet other teachers who are teaching the same topics or are interesting in the same kinds of things and build collaborations that might not have existed before.
• Recognition
  • Schools can build recognition.

Pinterest is growing in usage everyday. Some say it's just another fad that won't stay very long, but it is the fastest growing social media site. How do you think your school could use it? How can you remain engaging?

What is Pinterest? Can I use it to market my School?

What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a virtual pin board of items that people find on the web and upload to share. It's sort of like a visual social bookmarking site combined with brainstorming ideas. If you read the articles and want to share them this is the place. Right now it's growing most among young women, but it is one of the newest/fastest growing social networks. If you are interested in wedding planning, fashion, or recipes there is definitely something for you. If you're a classroom teacher or homeschooler there are many posters on Pinterest that are all about pinning lesson plan ideas. Ideas on how to mark the 100th day of school. The opportunities are really endless.

How does it work?
You basically create a topic area which is called a board and you find links to share or pictures to upload about a topic. Then you either find a site you want to share or upload a photo you want to share. The most annoying thing I find is that when you create a broad topic sometimes you want to narrow the board down later and there is not an easy way to move from one board to another without having to go individually into every board. I created recipes when I was first exploring Pinterest, but now I might want to have Cakes, Pies, etc. and I might want to have another one that is Meat Dishes. I wish I could drag an drop to my new board, but unless someone knows some easier way, I don't think there is.

How does it impact your school or organization?
One interesting article is from Mashable on how Pinterest is changing web design. http://mashable.com/2012/02/07/pinterest-web-design/. But what you post in a news article or a page on your website is also important. It means that postings need to have some type of visual.

How can you use Pinterest?
Heidi Miller posts how brands are using Pinterest and there are some excellent examples.

As she notes Drake is using it with the purpose of featuring student life. The boards allow a school to feature so many different aspects of the school and the purpose could be all over the place. One board could be to feature student work for the whole school or each grade could have a separate board. Another way is for Admissions to feature a "virtual tour" of the campus. Pretty easy to upload a bunch of photos of the school and then link them back to different features throughout the website. College Counseling could show off the places that students have gone to. Alumni could be featured there linking to news articles posted or blogs and websites about Alumni. The possibilities are endless.

Is your school using Pinterest? How is it using Pinterest?



Find me:
http://pinterest.com/ali254

My inbox is exploding, stop sending so many email messages!

Too much email is the complaint I have heard often from both our parents and teachers, but the problem is that so many people have something to say. Today's technology allows us to click on a button and send an email, but does your school or organization really have a plan for who gets to send out communications and when they go out? Does anyone take the time to test what these email messages will look at?

Problem 1- too many colors

As a school with use Microsoft Outlook and there are many problems with the different versions, especially Outlook on the Macintosh. We go back and forth on some email messages and sometimes because screens aren't calibrated correctly we don't notice that words throughout the message are a dark blue and then the rest of the message is black. The end result is as an organization we look bad. 

Problem 2- graphic emails

We've moved into an age where we don't send as many flyers home in backpacks and want to be green. So instead the solution in the minds of most people is let's just embed what we would have sent as a flyer into our emails for our parents to look at. Has anyone taken a look at the analytics of your website or emails. Ours has proven that over 60% of the population is viewing the emails on a mobile device, with the majority being an Apple Operating System. And they aren't necessarily showing the images. So it means when they open the email, unless the subject lines is amazing they have no clue what your message is about. And they may have just received 15 other emails that day that really had no importance at all.

Problem 3-big, bold, beautiful, and exclamation marks!!!!

So the senders of the email don't always know what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. Not every single lines needs and exclamation mark because it's really not all important. Emails that have every other word bold are actually much harder to read then ones that break up paragraph around a subject. In general 4 or more colors is probably too many colors to use for fonts in an email that is not designed for that purpose. The simpler the email is, the easier it is to read.

These are just a few of the problems I have run into in the last couple weeks. What kinds of problems do you have with your emails?

Have you found a successful way to streamline communication to your parents so they aren't receiving an email for the child's teachers, the principals, the head of school, the parent's association, the athletics department, the communications department, the advancement department, and so on?

How to Suggest a Facebook Fan page to Your Friends UPDATE

An easy way to get people to become fans of your Facebook fan page is as the admin for a page share it.

Here's how to do it:

1. Go the Fan Page
2. Go to the top right side of the Screen and press Invite Friend.

3. Once you are done with that, a list of your friends will show up and you can select friends to send the message to by clicking on their names. If your friend is already a fan you won't be able to suggest the page to them. Or if they have already been invited even if not by you they will be greyed out.

4. Click Submit and they will receive the request.

This option is no longer available for people who are not admins of the page. They have the option to share the page on the right side.


1. Go to the page you want to suggest
2. Go to the bottom left side of the page and press share. If you have a page you want to link with another page, then an easy way to add it is press "Add to My Page's Favorites".

3. You have several different options on how to share a page besides sharing it on another page. Most people will want to share on their own timeline. This will post it on what used to be know as your wall. And people who are subscribed to you will then see this page. It's a better method to post why you are sharing this page.  Sometimes you just want to share with a specific person, so this might be a better way to send a private Message. 

4. Once you have chosen your method and written something press Share Page.

Today's Filing Cabinets

Everyone is used to old filing cabinets where everyone had their own method of filing. Sometimes it was placed in alpha order by first name or other times it was done by last name. But there was always the exception to the rule. This person was really know by a different name so we'll put it under that name. The problem was when someone went through the files 5 years later when the person who created the system was no longer around, they couldn't find the information they were looking for.

Today's modern filing cabinets are information systems. These databases of information are used in the same ways that those filing cabinets were used. Besides the basic difference of coding from one system to another, they all handle information and records in a different way from another system. Each system thinks they have found the best practice for society, but the programmers do not always meet the users. The users each have their own "system" for filing away information and even within a department the system the system differs.

In 2010, my school moved away from the 30+ spread sheets, information systems, databases that we ran. I can't say we moved to a single system as our requirements could not be served by a single vendor. We did streamline most of the major systems into one system. The most challenging part for us was even though we are a young school in the area, we have been using an formal computer information system in one shape since at least the mid 80s and we have a rich history of 100 years of information that is stored somewhere.

As a school that has used an information system since early information systems existed, we have embraced the technology. When the computer system couldn't keep up with our needs we adopted a method to figure it out and make the system work. We created our own method of filing when we had a problem to solve. When the systems improved to handle this problem, we often did not get new training and had continued to "hack" the system. This left some very messy systems of information.

Twenty+ years latter, we are on a new system, and the next step in the process was cleaning up information. I continue to work on this cleanup and figuring out how we can guarantee the information we have is the best. But the methods to maintaining information that the staff used at the beginning are sometimes beyond me. Perhaps my methods will be beyond whoever fills this role in twenty years, but whenever I do something I try to make sure that someone will understand why it was done that way. When the system changes to the work arounds and hacks we have adopted I try to go back and make sure we update our data.

Our modern day filing cabinet is something that I can access from my phone, computer, or iPad. It lives in a different state and I will never "see" this file space. In many cases, our approach is the same as it was when it was in our same office space and very difficult to adjust in order to maintain an efficient information system.