Credit: http://www.ohpinteresting.com
“Pinning” on Pinterest has recently taken internet browsers by storm. Crafty recipes, creative home decor, and nearly any imaginable topic a guy or gal could ever need are featured in this inspiring website. But besides recreationally looking at things like as your favorite baby animals, this trend has expanded from being a solely entertainment feature and into becoming a useful tool for the classroom. Pinterest has quickly become a favorite among educators through its creative ideas and easy accessible “pinboards” to manage a wide variety of categories and interests.
Pinning is a great way for instructors to do things as simple as organizing seating charts or as technical as categorizing web content. Do you ever find yourself favoriting websites and then forgetting about them? Well, Pinterest helps you keep these ideas/websites organized in easy-to-access pin boards so you can access them when you need to. Pinterest is also great to communicate with other instructors. By simply “following” another pinner, like you would on twitter, you can access things that they have posted as well as sharing it, or by pinning it to your own board so that you have access to it later on.
Not only does Pinterest have creative organizing tips, but a great bonus for instructors—lesson plans! That’s right. And Pinterest is full of them! Instructors can post their lesson plans to show off any great ideas to share or swap with other instructors. In addition to these convenient and easily-accessible lesson plans are all sorts of ideas for student projects. Pinterest is a great place to get students involved. Just as a classroom Facebook group can be useful, Pinterest can bring interaction to another level through boards, followers, and visually rich content.
As Pinterest continues to become more popular and expand in user base, the usefulness of the website is rapidly expanding as well. Besides recreative and educational pinning, some companies are using Pinterest as a hiring tool. Companies such as Sundog, right here in the Fargo-Moorhead area, are using Pinterest for prospective employees to showcase talents, interests, and qualifications.
Pinterest is a great way for individuals to express themselves – check out this post on Teach Thought for even more ideas about how Pinterest can be utilized in the classroom.
Would you use Pinterest for educational purposes? How? Let us know!
*All pictures for this blog entry were found on Pinterest! 🙂
Learning, tomorrow. 