Tuesday, June 4, 2013

2. The Teacher's Guide to Pinterest

The Teacher's Guide to Pinterest, an article written by Julie Delello from the University of Texas at Tyler, informs the reader of the possibility of using Pinterest as a social networking website for teaching.  Although Pinterest covers a variety of different interests from travel to photography to fashion, there is a notably large community of teachers who have come together to contribute lesson plans, activities, and assessment ideas.  For a teacher of any level of experience, Pinterest can be an amazing resource; motivating children to learn is an ongoing effort.

Pinterest helps teachers to generate their own ideas, organize their classrooms, and to stay abreast of the latest trends in teaching, technology, and children's interests.  Delello also points out that Pinterest can be used as a collaborative tool between teachers and their peers, school administration, and parents.  "Pins" are a useful tool for communication due to the combinations of vivid, colorful, and helpful images with step by step guides, articles, and other forms of text.

Setting up a Pinterest account is fast and simple, and Delello describes account creation and the selection and posting of "pins" with an easy to follow set of instructions.  Delello describes how she decided to use Pinterest: she asked each of her students to contribute "pins," or posts, to the board, adding new ideas from a variety of sources.  While not every idea may be a winner, the best ideas from the pool of "pins" can be saved for later and used in the classroom.  At the end of this project, she and her students had amassed a huge board with over a thousand ideas for teaching.  I have begun to build a small board of teaching ideas on Pinterest for myself and plan to continue adding ideas throughout this course and in the future.

No comments:

Post a Comment