To Pin or Not to Pin

It's been awhile since I last posted and since then I have had to opportunity to explore several different internet tools.  The two I want to focus on for this post are Pinterest and Symbaloo.  Pinterest has been around for awhile now, and I'd be hard pressed to find a single friend or coworker that doesn't use it for at least personal pinning.  Despite it's prevalent use, I did discover new ways to efficiently use Pinterest this week!

Let me start by saying I absolutely love Pinterest!  In fact, it's going to be a Pinterest Christmas in my family this year (every gift idea is handmade and was found on Pinterest!).  I mostly use Pinterest for personal use, I'm a sucker for a good recipe, and a little for my classroom.  Until this week, I had only 1 board related to teaching, which I cleverly called "Teaching Things."  The problem with my board was that it was not effective.  Sure, I would pin all kinds of great ideas I had run across, but it wasn't organized in a way to be useful to me.  This week, however, I was shown a video that has completely changed my pinning practices!  Instead of having just one board for all my teacher related pins, I have since created boards based off specific units I teach.  It's still a work in progress, but already I have a much more useful resource that I can use in my classroom.  Check out my slightly less cluttered boards and follow me on Pinterest! Below you can find the video that completely changed my pinning habits.  Perhaps it will give you some ideas of your own!

The second resource I got to explore this week is a site called Symbaloo.  Symbaloo is another tool that can be used to organize resources online.  One feature of Symbaloo that I really liked is the ability to create an account using my existing Edmodo account.  I'm all about simplicity, so the fewer log-ins I need to remember, the better!  There is more to like about Symbaloo than just the ease of logging in, though.  Symbaloo is a great way to organize resources for students.  I could definitely see myself using Symbaloo in the classroom for a webquest.  Instead of having students type in 5-10 different websites to locate information, I could direct them to Symbaloo.  From Symbaloo, students would have access to the sites I want them to visit with a click of a mouse!  Symbaloo also allows the user to create different tabs, or webmixes.  This allows you to organize your sites even more.  For example, I created a webmix for my Earth Science unit.  This webmix contains sites that will guide my students toward an understanding of Plate Tectonics.  You can check out my webmix by clicking here!  Also, you can check out the video below for the ins and outs of using Symbaloo.