Week 6 - Reflection

Using Pinterest for teaching and learning.

I had heard about Pinterest before but now that I know a little more about it I realize that is s perfect technological tool to share and comment on visual material, which could be photographs, sketches, videos or web pages. I read that in the last couple of years its presence in the network has an incredible growing, and I think it is because its structure is more versatile at the time to compile content, organize and store ideas, so it is easy connect and comment on other people's work. Also one  important thing is that using this tool you can forget all about copyrights issues. You can attach images from other people’s web pages, or re-pin content from other people’s boards.  In fact sharing content from other people is actively encouraged. This tool is about the social activity of interaction and sharing and gaining followers, rather than keeping ownership of your work. When the Pin It button is used to select pins from a web page, the pin automatically includes a link to the source web page, so you can remember where you found it, and other people can go to the source for more information.

There are a lot of ideas to use Pinterest.  Educators of all levels and grades have a growing presence in this social media. After I have created my Pinterest account I immediately create a board with courses and learning material that I am needing for this term where I included the Lynda.com video clips. It is an excellent way to organize content that I access frequently in one place. I do not need to remember addresses or web pages to access what I need quickly.

Another idea could be create boards on Pinterest to concentrate research and reading material in one point. One important thing using internet is that our students need to access secure and reliable sites. As educators (K-12) we can create Pinterest boards to give our students a secure and structured list of resources where they can find the information they need about some specific topics that we need to cover in our lesson plans. The web is too wide and there are many unreliable sources. Sometimes it would be good to restrict what you want them to look at, so we can create  boards with all the information they need so they can concentrate on writing and reading, rather than searching through masses of information.

Teachers can design research projects to improve student knowledge in any subject such as World History. For example, if the research project is about The Great War, each student can create a Great War board where they can pin research, YouTube videos, and pictures from both Pinterest and around the Internet. When they’re ready to take their project to the writing or presentation stage, they’ll have everything they need in one organized, visually , and easy to access place, and the best if students use this kind of tools like Pinterest for research it could foster both digital literacy and modern research skills.