Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


Pindex Promises Pinterest for Educators

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 02/29/16

Although Stephen Fry has left Twitter, the popular British actor and writer hasn't given up on social media altogether. Numerous sources have reported that Fry is involved in an education start-up being pitched as a "Pinterest for education." Pindex allows teachers, students and anybody else to create online pinboards for collecting "the best educational material."

A "board" in Pindex parlance is a collection of content  —  images, video and documents. To add content to their boards, users get a bookmark button from the site and then click it as they browse the Web to capture a specific image and link. Educators can post quizzes to their boards or "completion awards" that visitors can earn by getting 100 percent on the test or checking each post on the board

The site's founders also expect to create original content, which is where Fry comes in. The actor stars in a popular British comedy TV show called QI, where panelists get points for "being interesting." Now he'll be narrating videos for the site, such as a series of short segments on the Large Hadron Collider.

Pindex Promises Pinterest for Educators

According to recent coverage in UK-based The Telegraph, Fry is one of four people involved in the site. This isn't the first tech venture he has participated in. Previous investments have included Summly, created by then-15-year-old wunderkind Nick D'Aloisio, which was acquired by Yahoo; and Pushnote, a now-defunct service that allowed users to add comments on any Web page.

Fry recently made headlines when he chose to deactivate his highly popular twitter account after facing major online criticism for comedic comments made during a British awards show. The experience didn't turn him off online activities altogether. As he told The Telegraph, "At a time when it is easy to lose faith in an online world that seems to center around trolling, bullying, hating, trivializing and belittling, it is worth remembering the incredible power of the Internet to inform and educate, lucidly and entertainingly. We'd like to welcome teachers, professors and anyone with a passion to share the most engaging and captivating material at pindex.com."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Abstract energetic glowing lines with particles

    Meta Steps Up Enterprise AI Ambitions with Muse Spark Launch

    Meta has announced the launch of Muse Spark 1.1, a multimodal reasoning model designed for agentic AI, alongside a new Meta Model API that gives developers access to the model for the first time.

  • lock symbol with quantum bits in dynamic motion

    Microsoft Accelerates Focus on Quantum-Safe Security

    Microsoft is speeding up its quantum-safe security timeline, saying advances in quantum computing and new federal requirements have pushed post-quantum cryptography from a future planning issue into an immediate engineering priority.

  • Digital Screen with young woman using a virtual reality headset

    Montclair State U Partners with Dreamscape Learn on New VR Facility

    New Jersey's Montclair State University has announced the completion of a new virtual reality learning facility developed in partnership with Dreamscape Learn. The 2,450-square-foot lab space is inside the College of Communication and Media building and will serve students pursuing careers in digital media, virtual reality, and content creation.

  • interconnected nodes with currency symbols

    Gartner: Half of Gen AI Projects Could Exceed Budget by 2028

    Organizations may be underestimating the actual cost of generative AI as they move from experimentation to production, according to Gartner's "10 Best Practices for Optimizing Generative and Agentic AI Costs" report.