Solving my Personal Mystery of Pinterest as an Education Tool

Last year early my during internship, I heard my co-op teacher speak about ideas that she had and shared on Pinterest. I was curious, so I set up an account , however as you can see I did not initially understand how to use Pinterest, and how to get "Pins" to share with others.

Once an account is set up, in the top left hand corner there is a search bar, along with a drop down menu with a variety of categories, including education. Here, there seems to be infinite resources available, however because of how general the topic of 'education', searching a more specific search in within education is helpful.

For example, one area where I have observed teachers use ideas from Pinterest is for use is for classroom set-up. By typing in the search bar classroom, other searches are prompted, including classroom organizing. My search eventually became specific to classroom organizing middle school . From here, you will see a large variety of innovative ideas that can be used for classroom organization and set-up. From this page, I found the 'pin' at the end of this article that I would consider using in my classroom one day.

Pinterest is a form of social media, and as such, its power is in sharing ideas. I decided to 'pin' this on a board I titled: "Education ideas". It is also encouraged to follow other Pinterest users with similar interests. It is also possible to share pins through Twitter and Facebook.

I think Pinterest is a valuable tool for teachers, since it provides valuable visual images of ideas that teachers can use in their own practice. From what I hear, Pinterest can also be quite the procrastination tool, so be sure to utilize it for a specific purpose in planning as a teacher.