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Pinterest for Language Educators<br />
We encourage educators at all levels to send in<br />
their short ideas and suggestions for The Idea Box.<br />
Please try to keep your submissions to fewer than<br />
1,000 words.<br />
Pinterest is a fast-growing social network<br />
and bookmarking site. It allows users<br />
to set up boards of things they love from<br />
the Internet, or images that they themselves<br />
upload. Many people create boards<br />
of visuals that inspire them. Boards exist<br />
featuring recipes, travel, design, wedding<br />
ideas, journals, books, nature photography,<br />
bucket lists—the ideas for boards are endless.<br />
Pinterest is like a virtual visual wish<br />
list—a place to collect, organize, and share<br />
images of things one loves.<br />
While there are many useful bookmarking<br />
sites out there, Pinterest offers some<br />
unique advantages for the language education<br />
profession. There are already many<br />
language teachers organizing resources and<br />
sharing them on Pinterest. They are creating<br />
boards of great lessons, tips, handouts<br />
and videos on Pinterest and making them<br />
available to many via the site. Pinterest is<br />
turning out to be an indispensable resource<br />
for me as a language educator, as well as<br />
for many of my colleagues.<br />
56<br />
By Janina Klimas<br />
This page, left below: Me Gusta stamp the author found on Pinterest; right below: Board<br />
titled “Spanish” for organizing web resources for the author’s class. Next page: Screen<br />
shot of the author’s main page and access to all of her boards.<br />
There have been some amazing activities<br />
that I have found on this site from other<br />
language teachers, and the boards have<br />
been an excellent way to organize them. I<br />
have a passion for languages, so I have a<br />
board for each one that I have experience<br />
in. However, I teach Spanish and English,<br />
so since joining earlier this year many of the<br />
activities that I have found and/or uploaded<br />
have been in one of those languages.<br />
Another way that Pinterest can benefit<br />
language teachers is by featuring their<br />
products. Some teachers are selling the<br />
great products and activities that they<br />
have created via their Pinterest boards by<br />
providing links to sites like Teachers Pay<br />
Teachers (www.teacherspayteachers.com).<br />
There are also links to items on Etsy and<br />
other sites.<br />
The Language Educator n February 2013
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