Quick post about my Pinterest process for class

As I mentioned in a post yesterday, the discovery that Pinterest has RSS feeds has given me some big ideas about how to make better use of Pinterest in my classes next semester — Co-Learning: Bookmarking and Sharing with Pinterest. So, I'm trying to build in some systematic Pinterest routines as I work with the students on their projects, and I wanted to write that up quickly here since I just started reading a new page at a student's Storybook. Here's my routine for pinning when I am reading and responding to students' new story pages:

1. Pin story. I pin the new story to the class Board for the Storybooks. This is a semester-specific Board where each story gets pinned. I have gotten in the habit of manually pasting in the link in addition to the way Pinterest automatically links via the image. Here is the story I just pinned at the Myth-Folklore Fall 2014 Board; it's the story of the nymph Minthe.

2. Pin resource. Often, but not always, there is some kind of related resource that I can pin to the general class Board which is a Board where I pin all kinds of stuff that might be of interest to students in that particular class: Myth-Folklore Portfolio. In this case, I pinned the Wikipedia article about the mint plant which contains a section on the etymology of "mint" and its connection to Greek mythology.

3. Inoreader. Since I am subscribed to both of these boards via Inoreader, that means the new pins show up automatically at Inoreader, where I can send them back out into the world either via RSS or through an HTML clipping display, as you can see here at my consolidated feed.

So, there's lots more to say here about how I hope to be using Pinterest more next semester, but I wanted to take just a minute to document my process right now. I was not systematic about my use of Pinterest earlier in the semester, but now that I can use RSS to both harvest and then redistribute my Pinterest activity, that gives me a real incentive to make Pinterest a part of how I work every day as I read and respond to the great stories my students are including in their projects.

HAPPY.