Collaborative Presentation of Web 2.0 Tools

Reflection:

Using Pinterest to Curate Research

Pinterest is a widely used visual bookmarking site that can easily be used by students to curate research. In the first activity for "Advertising for an Ancient Civiization," students will start the research process around the culminating activity for the sixth grade History study of Ancient Civilizations. They will use Pinterest as an online space to curate credible online resources on the geographical, political, religious, economic, and social structure of their group's Ancient Civilization.

Students will work in groups to bookmark, or "pin", online resources on their group's Ancient Civilization. They will not only collect relevant resources, but they will be required to cite using MLA format (using Easybib) and annotate resources with a justification for the resource to be included. Through the commenting feature of Pinterest, students will be able to expand on their peer's annotations, identifying additional information, comparing resources to those that they have examined, and assessing the credibility of the pins.

This experience will be more engaging to students because the resulting "board" will be more visually pleasing rather than a typical note taking or word processing document. In groups, students will be able to focus on particular cultural elements and the resulting board will be very robust with resources that can then be shared with other Pinterest users.