Sunday, September 28, 2014

Using Pinterest to Find Great Classroom Ideas


Do you use Pinterest to find fun teaching ideas? Pinterest is one of the simplest resources to use, and is filled with links to amazing ideas!  The best thing about Pinterest is that you can glance at a picture and decide in a second rather something is worth a deeper look, or not.

Here are a few tips on how to better utilize Pinterest as a tool to find teaching ideas.

Tip #1:
Use the search bar!!!!!!!!!!!
You can type nearly anything in the search bar and you will get results. Teaching point-slope form this week? Type “point-slope form” into the search bar, and voila ideas will pop up! Teaching right triangle trig? type that in!

Tip #2:
Pin, send or like pins that look promising! 
I’ve been pinning for quite a while now. Sending and liking pins is new to me though. When you hover the mouse over a pin a few options pop up (see above picture!) If you click the “pin it” button, you will be able to pin that pin to one of your Pinterest boards. If you click the “send” button, an option will pop up that will allow you to write a message, then send the pin to one of your other Pinterest friends, OR to an email address. To send to an email address simply type the address into the bar that pops up. Liking a pin is a way to keep track of ideas without committing them to a board. If you choose to like a pin it will be stored on your main account page. There is an option (shown below) to view all likes. I often like items that I know I want to take a better look at, but don’t have time for at the moment. Later, I check out all of the items I liked. If the pins are a fit for what I need/like/could use, it gets moved to a board. If not, I unlike it by simply clicking the heart on the pin again.

Tip #3:
Follow other boards on topics you like, or need. 

After you have typed in a search term the Pinterest default setting is to show you pins that match your search. By clicking “boards” you can change that view so that you can see entire boards that match the topic you are searching for! Liking boards will make it so that pins those pinners add to those boards will show up in your Pinterest newsfeed. One thing I look for when I search for new boards to follow is the amount of pins pinned to a board. Sometimes I follow boards with less than 30 pins, but my general rule is 30+. I have found that boards with a lot of pins starting out usually indicates that the owner of the board is an active Pinterest user. It’s nice to have other people find pins on topics I like! Saves me time! J I follow many boards that are titled "Algebra", "Geometry" or "Secondary Math" because pins put on those boards are ones I like having on my school boards.  

Do you use Pinterest? What are your favorite boards to follow? Please post you Pinterest url - I love finding new boards to follow! You can find me on Pinterest here: http://www.pinterest.com/4theloveofmath/


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