Secondary Smorgasbord: How I Use Pinterest for Education

Let me start by being totally honest.  When I was first introduced to the idea of blogging about my favorite Pinterest boards and their uses for the Secondary Smorgasbord Linky, I was not at all enthusiastic.  While I use Pinterest, I have spent many days cursing its existence.  I just didn’t get it.  It seemed overdone and just too transient for me.  But then, I got it!  
I finally figured it out, and that’s made all the difference.

Pinterest is now a tool that I find very valuable for personal use, but also for the classroom.  For one, it is a great organizational tool.  Like quilting in the olden days, it helps us record what matters most so we can find it later to share it with others.  But more importantly, it can be the inspiration we need to help us finish a task, travel the world, or investigate a curiosity.

For teachers, Pinterest can help us find the resources we need to keep our classes creative and engaging.  It’s a tool to help us organize our lessons, and it can help us find all we need to pique the interest of our students.

Overall, Pinterest is what you make of it.  Whether it serves as a tool for a simpler life, a gathering place for resources, or an escape to the places of which you dream, it is the best way to organize it all on one simple screen!  For me, it’s all of the above!

Since I love traveling, teaching, and reading about history from primary sources, my favorite boards help me keep track of those exact topics!  The two at the very top of my list are…

  • My Vacations Board is where I pin everyplace I hope to travel and everything I hope to do as I RV my way around the world in my retirement days!  I also pin to this board when I find great places or topics that would work well for Geography courses and all things Culture!
  • My Primary Sources & Analysis Resources Board is a great mix of websites devoted to sharing quality primary sources from all around the world and all through time, as well as great activities and lessons that help students best analyze and learn from those resources!

Happy linking as you visit the other blogs on this week’s Secondary Smorgasbord!  And a special thank you to ELA Buffet and Desktop Learning Adventures for organizing these helpful linkies for our classrooms!