Pinterest

Pinterest is a new tool that is becoming extremely useful in the education field. Pinterest is essentially an online bulletin board where people can "pin" ideas, pictures, and videos from all over the internet to one place. It's as simple as seeing something you find interesting, pressing the "Pin it" button and added it to your board. Pinterest is a great tool for teachers, one of the best features is the search bar. You can type anything into the search bar, for example "math lesson ideas" and your are immediately brought to hundreds of math lesson ideas that teachers can browse through. The best part, is if you find a great picture, simply click on the picture and it will take you to the original source. In this way, if you find a great lesson plan, you might find even more from the original source.

As a teacher, this resource is extremely helpful. Hundreds of teachers are using this tool as a resource to share and find lesson ideas. Simply searching Math lesson ideas brings up a variety of pins and pin boards devoted strictly to math lessons. You can search for anything you can think of, math, science, english, reading, and even classroom management. There are even posters that you could print out and hang up in the classroom. Teachers are constantly trying to find engaging lessons to teach the common core standards, and this resource has more than you could ever imagine. For my work with Pinterest and this project I created three pin boards. One for math lessons, one for science lessons, and one for technology and

engineering. For the math and science boards I tried to gear it towards fourth and fifth grades. For the technology and engineering board, I was trying to just be broad and search for elementary. Both of those topics were easy to find for upper grades but could be a challenge for some elementary topics. I found a few great sites for math and science lessons including fantastic engaging activities for the classroom. One of my favorite "pins" for my Math Board is a website about hands on building activities to give students real world experience in measurement! It's a new take on measurement that is extremely hands-on and would be a huge asset to any classroom. On my Science Board, I have a great pin about how to make a pizza box solar oven as a science experiement. It gets kids involved in the activity and they also get a nice s'more when they finish the experiment. My Technology and Engineering Board has a lot of pins containing apps for the iPad that can be used in the classroom as well as building activities for kids and templates to use more technology in the classroom.

As a teacher, I plan to use lessons and ideas that I find from Pinterest in my classroom. Implementing the common core in an engaging way seems to be a challenge for most teachers. I would welcome the idea of someone else giving me lessons that I can then differentiate for my class and use. I've even seen a pin where a teacher had a Pinterest project for her class! She made a bulletin board in her room where students put up pictures and interesting facts about a set topic. It's a great example of a concept map that is more than just drawing on a piece of notebook paper. Pinterest has endless amounts of engaging classroom activities, and I will definitely use it as a future teacher.