Well, we’re all back to work from our holiday breaks and I’m finding that no one is really in the mood for anything too deep. So today and tomorrow, we’ll be providing some quick ideas that make a big impact for your classroom. Our focus today is on using Pinterest in a way you may not have considered in the past: as a course development and implementation tool. How can we create courses through Pinterest?
Creating Courses Through Pinterest
How do you go about this process? Pinterest allows you to create boards with pictures, documents and now videos and links to websites. Here’s a few steps to make creating and sharing a course through Pinterest a success:
1. Organize all of your materials. Be sure to have a list and links to all documents, videos, online presentations, artwork and music you’d like to embed within your course content. Then, sequence them out on a draft word document so you know how you want to post the items on your board.
2. Don’t limit yourself. Think about all of the sources you could reference and tools you can use to share information and encourage your students to collaborate through your board. Google docs, Google books, and Diigo links are all easy to embed onto your board. Additionally, you can encourage students to create their own boards to gather their own sources and demonstrate their understanding by uploading their own work to share.
3. Include Assessment Options. After organizing your content on the board and encouraging collaboration and research, you can build in assessments to find out just how well students understood your content. You can create an assessment through Socrative.com for a live test option or through Google docs if you’d like something more static. Both of these options can be embedded at the end of your board or used as a check-in throughout the course.
As we kick off this new year, I hope you enjoy this new way to use such a rapidly growing social tool!
