Pinterest in Education

All through the Internet you can find lots of ideas to integrate the use of Pinterest into your classroom. All of them are really inspiring and make you feel like getting down to work immediately. In my case, I decided to centre on one of the uses of Pinterest I read about and later, I will try another thing.

As this year we are working on Interactive English Notebooks, I have started out in Pinterest with the most obvious use for me; Collecting and Sharing my students' creations for the Interactive Notebook.

These are the steps I followed in this personal project:

•  Sign up to Pinterest with your email (it's free)
• Create a board and give it a clarifying name. (mine is "Interactive Notebook Samples")
• Embed this board to your blog / site. (this way the rest of students can have a look at other students' works and get some ideas to put into practice)
• Take photos of your students' creations. (I only take photos of the best works in the class)
• Upload the photos to the board you have created. (everybody will see them through your blog / site)

I started doing this with true enthusiasm but soon, and because it was resulting in great success, I faced a problem; I couldn't cope with all the photos I had to take. When my students knew their works were shown on the net, they improved a lot and so I went from taking 1 or 2 photos every session to 5 or 6. The solution to this was easy, I asked for help to my students, and no need to say, they met expectations. Now I mark the selected works with a "cool" stamp, a gomet...and it is the student who takes the photo and sends it to me.

By now I'm happy with the results I'm getting. On one hand students are doing their best and this means that they take time to make their schemes, minibooks and so on. On the other hand the Pinterest board is really useful for those students with a bit of lack of imagination to illustrate vocabulary or grammar lessons.

For further information about the uses of Pinterest in Education check the following sites:

	37 Ways Teachers Can Use Pinterest In The Classroom
	16 Ways Teachers Use Pinterest
	A Straightforward Guide To Using Pinterest In Education
	Educators: Making the Most of Pinterest
	Using Pinterest for Education