Pinterest

Hi folks,

A few words about Pinterest. My first thought was "what a peculiar name". I then decided to visit the site, and look at a few pin boards. The concept seemed a bit odd at first - an online version of a physical picture-only bulletin board. When I signed up, this seemed even odder - it asked me what my preferences were regarding art, etc., and I was given built-in people's boards to follow - I didn't realize my taste in art was so avant-garde!

After deleting a few of the follow-ees, and keeping a few that I found aesthetically interesting, I then went about creating some boards of my own, including one for my current place of residence (Richmond, Virginia) and one for my computer training business (pcLearning4U). The interface for adding ones own pictures, and re-using others (called repinning) is reasonably simple. I've also added a board for elearning-related items, and via searches in Google and Pinterest itself, have begun to see if and how Pinterest is supporting elearning/courseware-related efforts.

Much to my pleasant surprise, there is a lot of stuff out there! I had more luck doing Google searches on "Pinterest elearning" and "Pinterest courseware" than searching on Pinterest itself. I am just now scratching the surface of looking into Pinterest's elearning uses. A couple of uses are for lists of available courseware (such as Eric Sheninger's site), and for elearning-related infographics (such as Juan Antonio Ortiz' site).

I'm not sure if Pinterest itself is a good delivery tool for elearning content - at this point, it appears to be more useful as an information organizer, and a very good one at that.

As for myself, my use of this app is just beginning. All suggestions, in particular for the elearning board of my site, are greatly appreciated, as are all general comments regarding this post. If you are interested in keeping up with my efforts, please feel free to follow the board at the link above.

Thanks - Ted

Lectora - a few tidbits

If you are reading this blog, you probably have either used Lectora or know someone who has. Lectora is an excellent courseware authoring tool, by Trivantis. I have had the privilege of creating online courses using Lectora on several occasions.

One nice feature (among many!) is its test building mechanism. Questions can be set up in all the standard formats (multiple-choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, etc.) with a variety of editing options. Multiple-choice questions, for instance, can have one or more-than-one correct answer. You can also physically edit the question page after you are done, for example, you can move an answer 5 pixels down if it looks better that way.

In fact, Trivantis is so associated with Lectora that they changed their website name to lectora.com!

The above are my opinions - please feel free to submit yours.

Thanks - Ted