One of my favorite tools this school year has been Pinterest. I’d like to share how I have been using it in Spanish class on this Five for Friday post.
1. To gather authentic resources to use in class. Several sites pin their content and I can quickly re-pin items that I plan on using in class into my Spanish Class Resource folder. One of my favorite humor sites in the target language is Risas sin mas. Another great authentic resource is Infografía en castellano.
2. To gather authentic images for class. Pinterest is filled with beautiful photography. Recently I wanted to show my class photographs of tropical fruits that they may not be able to get in the Midwest. I found all the fruits I was looking for with a quick search on Pinterest. Of course you could do this with Google images as well, but Pinterest was a lot quicker. One of my favorite Pinterest curators is SraHache. She has 92 boards organized across a variety of topics (countries, levels, holidays, cultural information).
3. To share and learn about lesson plans & teaching ideas. Although I still use Twitter, I find that I can narrow my Pinterest feed to very specific boards. For instance, I may only want to follow Sra. Smith’s boards that relate to Spanish class. I don’t have to follow her recipe & wedding boards. With Twitter, I don’t have the ability to choose what comes through my feed, so sometimes I need to scroll through a lot of material that is not important to me. Of course Pinterest doesn’t provide the opportunity for conversation like Twitter.
4. As a homework option for my class. My students have over 20 options to practice vocabulary and I added Pinterest this year. They can find images that represent the vocabulary we are studying and type in the word when they re-pin the image to their Spanish homework board. You can see a sample board here.
5. As a collaboration of resources. Pinterest is also be a good way to compile resources for a class project. I want my students to use technology for educational (not just recreational) purposes. Since many of my students already have Pinterest accounts “for fun”, this would be a good tool for them to use for educational purposes. One student would create a board and ask their group to join it & compile the resources they want to use for any kind of research based project—sort of like a visual Diigo.
I’d love to know how you use Pinterest in class. Thanks for reading!
