Pinterest is the latest, hottest social network. It is a visual bookmarking site, allowing you to collect images and links onto pin boards (like bulletin boards) and share them with your friends. Here are five ways to use Pinterest in your classroom.
The number one educational use for Pinterest right now is collection. You can find lots of wonderful ideas for classroom crafts, lesson plans, and ways to decorate your environment. While most of the activities available on Pinterest are for K-6 (they have cuter projects), many of these projects can be adapted for older students.
The great resources I've found for my secondary classroom include cartoons explaining grammar rules, classroom rules posters, and DIY desktop pencil organizers.
Elementary educators can expect to find Thing 1 and Thing 2 handprint art, recipes for themed snacks, melted crayon paintings and more.
2. Interactive Study Guides
Now we get into less conventional uses. This is a great idea for your visual and hands-on students who need images and interaction to remember information. Create a pin-board study guide!
You'll need to create a list of questions for your study guide. Then find internet resources to answer those questions and pin them with the question as the description. Be sure to find pages with visual interest. A test about anatomy could show a chart of the parts of the brain with the description, "Which part of the brain is responsible for memory," and link to a page about the human brain.
Create a pin board with age appropriate titles of merit, using their covers for the visual aspect. Link to Amazon, Goodreads, or a book review site. Refer students to this list for Independent reading assignments or liesure reading.
3b. Likewise, you can create a list of topics for assignments and let students pick off of the pin board. Let them choose topics for papers about twentieth century artists by looking at their images and linking to a blurb about the topic they might choose. Give them background information before choosing.
4. Research Projects
Have students create their own pin boards to organize research. Are they studying Ancient Greece? Have them pin images of art, videos about myths, and photographs of the landscape. Make learning constructive and visual with a Pinterest research projects.
5. Extra Help
Create a classroom pin board with links to videos and articles for further explanation and exploration.
Universal Tips:
Here are some things you should remember, no matter what your application!
- Visual- Be certain to use a strong image on your bookmark. It will make an impression with students and help keep your board organized.
- Description- Utilize descriptions. Most casual Pinterest users only post small comments. In the classroom, images should be matched with strong study guide questions, descriptions, etc. Let your students use all parts of their brain for higher impact.
- Link- It's nice to collect pictures, but try to collect them from reliable sites with valuable content. You can find The Hunger Games book cover on a number of sites, so pin it from a site that has value. Choose scholarly articles, well-written reviews, or Amazon purchase pages.
- Organization- Make sure that your boards have a clear purpose. "My Classroom", "Graphic Design", and "Ancient Greece" are some examples of strong themes. Organization will help you find saved links later and help the other users utilize your pin boards.
