Kite-surfers, Pinterest & A Little Gripe!

Maroochydore Beach, Sunshine Coast

A windy day at Maroochydore, and the kite-surfers are out in force! They can be very acrobatic, so they are great fun to watch! I'm working on a kite-surfer art lesson ...... coming one day soon ......

I discovered Pinterest in August this year and since then have gradually changed my whole method of planning and recording lesson ideas, projects that I want to do and projects that I've done. Apart from anything else, it's saving me a heap in printer ink, plastic document sleeves and ring-binder folders!!

It was also through Pinterest, by following the links back to the original sites, that I discovered the world of art teacher bloggers - which in the few short months since I began blogging has also transformed how I work in many ways. While I have always kept a website to showcase my students' work, the only people who actually got to see it were the students themselves, their parents and anyone they happened to email the site address to. A blog opens the audience out to the whole world! My kids are amazed that people - art teachers no less! - from all over the world are looking at (and often commenting on!) their art work!

I always track back to the original site of a pin because, even if I've used a particular technique umpteen times before, there are often valuable little tips, tricks or variations that I didn't know about within the directions! It's also good to see who they have credited in their post, which you can also track back....

In preparing my lesson for next week, I've found a couple of pins related to the technique I want to use. One went straight to the source (yeah!) but others didn't - it is SO FRUSTRATING to find yourself linked to a home page instead of the post page! What should be a 2 minute job becomes an extended exploration to find the original post... not always easy because many people, myself included, don't always name (or label) their posts with an accurate description of the technique used! So if I can't find it within a reasonable time frame, I give up - and maybe don't credit the correct person when I publish my post (which I really, really try to do!!!)

Like many others new to Pinterest and Blogging, I had no idea at first that there are quite a few (often unspoken and unwritten) etiquette guidelines for pinning and blogging that seem to have just evolved over time. Following them shows respect for the person who generated the idea in the first place, and was generous enough to share.

For all the newbies like me out there (I know the old hands will already know all this stuff!) there are a number of articles out there on pinterest and blogging etiquette - a couple I've found helpful are Pinterest Dos and Don'ts on Minds in Bloom and Pinterest Etiquette on kirstencan. Patty at Deep Space Sparkle also has some interesting tips in her post How to Link Back (and be a blogger's best friend). All are well worth a read!!