Visual Bookmarking for Education With Pinterest

Are you as addicted to pinning as I am? In December, Pinterest saw its user base spike to 7.5 million people. It’s not about updating a status or fitting a post into 140 characters. It’s about organizing and sharing the things you find interesting on the web. Users collect visuals from all over the web and pin them onto categorized boards. People are using Pinterest to plan weddings, decorate their homes, find the most creative recipes, and share great teaching ideas. I find myself spending hours reading the suggestions posted by others.

There are many ways Pinterest can be useful in education:

1. Pinterest is a great tool for students. It can be used as a visual and creative way to do digital journaling. Instead of copying research facts in a traditional way, researchers can collect information via boards on Pinterest. Students can also organize resources for presentations, projects, and essays. For easy collaborating, they can even share their boards with classmates.

2. Pinterest can help you organize lesson plans. You can use Pinterest to search for a specific topic like cells, Earth Day, or the periodic table. You can also just browse for general teaching ideas. The images that are pinned are linked to the original source so that you can easily re-create the activity. As you start collecting pins, you can save them for another day, which makes it extremely useful for planning ahead.

3. Pinterest can expand your Personal Learning Networks. Pinterest is an easy way to meet and connect with fellow teachers. You may be surprised by all of the great concepts flying around and how easy it is to follow the pinboards of other teachers, no matter where they are. This keeps you in the know with current trends in teaching.

The reason I find Pinterest so valuable to education is its wealth of inspiring ideas. With Pinterest, I can follow actual suggestions instead of status updates. Educators are posting creative projects and tools about everything from bulletin boards to quick teaching tips, lesson plans, printables, and so much more. Users are placing the best ideas on the web for teaching into nicely organized Pinterest boards. One of my favorite ideas so far is the 1-minute brain break for classrooms, where teachers create a jar full of activity-based brain breaks for when students are drifting during instruction.

To get you started using Pinterest, here are some great teacher-based boards:

• General Pinterest for education: http://pinterest.com/source/education.com
• Amanda Plum’s Pinterest account dedicated to teaching ideas: http://pinterest.com/amanda_plum
• Teacher Things, by Jenny Bales Wali: http://pinterest.com/walij/teacher-things
• What to Teach, by Kelly Kravitz: http://m.pinterest.com/monchichisuite/what-to-teach
• Classroom ideas, by Felicia Ciarelli: http://pinterest.com/feliciac0/classroom-ideas

Happy Pinning! If you need help getting access to Pinterest, e-mail us at ole@pearson.com and we’ll make sure you get an invite!