Re: Pushback From ‘Pinterest Criticism’

UPDATE: After dozens of comments (not all got published) and even half a dozen emails today alone, this post has been pulled. Ultimately the message was not clear and the tone problematic, and I accept full responsibility for that.

Thanks as always for your comments, and passionate work. That always comes through with TeachThought readers, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

The original post appears below.

by Terry Heick

Thanks everyone for the comments on the recent ‘Does Education Have A Pinterest Problem?‘ article. (I also shared this note as an editor’s note there as well.) This post was contributed to TeachThought from an outside educator, as is about 10-15% of our content.

I chose to run the post because I think it makes some valid points and, more broadly, is asking some relevant questions, including: As sources of curriculum become more numerous and varied, what’s holding it all together? How can we fold in more diverse resources while creating a tighter, more ‘precise’ curriculum (i.e., use curricula to help create curriculum)?

An analogy here is to think of a chef, who used to buy all of his/her supplies from 1-3 vendors–with ingredients more or ‘aware of’ one another–suddenly buying from 100 different vendors. The upside is much potential for quality and diversity and new thinking. The downside could be a curriculum full of wonderful lessons that fail to resonate together. (Though this also gets at the idea that units may not be the best approach at all, which we’ve discussed before.)

I didn’t find this insulting of teachers (I am one, as is my wife), or critical of TpT (a site we plan to use more of ourselves to provide exactly these kinds of resources in the future), pinterest, or any other social media channel.

The general thesis, as I read it, had more to do with the idea of curricular and instructional design, for example: “One block is fine, but it’s sort of pointless without the others, and not at its best until everything is in order.” The last line also provides a great summary IMHO: “Pinterest is an easy way to get through the day, and a wonderful resource to supplement our pedagogy, but it’s not the final answer to this question of building brains.”

When you think about the movement from learning model to academic standard to learning target to unit design to lesson design to activity design, being concerned about the way the different pieces (that may not have been built for one another) doesn’t seem to be a stretch, nor does it assume that teachers are thoughtless and incapable. At TeachThought, we assume the exact opposite, in fact.

I’d pull the post if I found it insulting to our collective intelligence as educators (again, this post was contributed from an outside educator), but I enjoy being challenged, and hope that, at the worst, that’s how you’ll take this. I’m a huge believer in pushback, communication, and disruption. That’s how things change!