The spaces the students use right now — blogs and websites — are writing-intensive spaces, which makes sense because I teach writing classes! At the same time, I'd like to create a bookmarking-and-sharing space that will bring out into the open other important things that students do in the class, in addition to their written work. The Pinterest Boards will be a way for them to share their favorite parts of the reading each week, and it will also be a way for them to document their interactions with other students in the class. I also hope the Pinterest Boards will be a place where they will also document their research activities for the class, sharing materials they find exciting and/or fun and/or useful.
In the past, I had tried to get students about using Diigo, but that never went anywhere. Diigo is incredibly powerful, but it really is not fun to use. Pinterest, on the other hand, while not being powerful in the way Diigo is, can be incredibly fun... and the fun factor is huge here! I would love to get students used to the idea of bookmarking, curating, and sharing, and I think Pinterest is the fun and easy way to do that.
So, the more I think about this, the more excited I get. My own experience with Pinterest has been super-positive. I first got interested in Pinterest because it has some very nice widgets (I love widgets!), and now that I have discovered Pinterest RSS, I am sure this can be a really useful tool for my RSS approach to class management — thanks to that incredibly powerful RSS tool, Inoreader. For details, see the blog post, and I am so glad I have formulated this idea now; the next two weeks of Connected Courses will be a great way to ponder this some more and develop it in greater detail! Whoo-hoo!!!
Here are some screenshots of the Storybook Boards for my classes this semester: Myth-Folklore and Indian Epics. :-)
