My Janux Project and Pinterest

Although I am so frustrated with the Janux software, I am really excited about the new project it has sparked for me: Latin sundial mottoes. Since this is a project that has a strong visual element - the beautiful sundials themselves! - in addition to the text, Pinterest is a logical channel for me to use in sharing my project, along with my usual blog posts. So, I wanted to write up here how I am using Pinterest exactly:

1. I have a private board where I am bookmarking higgledy-piggledy the sundials that I might want to use. This is actually better than bookmarking in Diigo because I need the VISUAL cue provided by the image as I go back through what I have bookmarked and select the item I want to work on. I am keeping the board private because I am bookmarking CC-licensed images as well as images that are not CC-licensed; eventually I may decide to contact the copyright owners of those non-CC-licensed images to see if they will give me permission to use their images in a blog post. So far, though, I have plenty of CC-licensed material to work with.

2. I then created a public board for Latin sundials, and as I add new blog posts, I also pin them to the board. Here is what I have so far: Latin Sundials at Pinterest.

3. I also learned how to create widgets for individual pins! That is something new for me. You can see those in the sidebar of my Janux History of Science blog, and I've pinned one here below as an example. My plan for the blog is to have two pins in the sidebar from my two most recent blog posts. So, as I add a new post, I'll move the top pin down in the sidebar and add the new pin up top. It takes just a moment to do; you just go to a pin, click on Share, choose Your Website, and then grab the embed code. You only need the actual js script once on a page; after that, you can just grab the data line. Very impressive: I love widgets!

I am really glad I learned how to do this. It's a great use of javascript, and I think my students will really enjoy being able to integrate a Pinterest board into a blog post or into their blog sidebar. See also earlier post where I learned how to do widgets for an entire Pinterest board; it's a little bit more complicated than doing a pin widget, but not by much.