Organizing Web Searches with Pinterest

Have you heard of the pinterest craze? Maybe you thought it wasn't for you because you don't plan on making wreaths out of all your old newspapers and headbands with all your old tee shirts. But lest you thought pinterest was only for those who reek of the craft store, let me enlighten you. This site is an AMAZING way to organize your web searches. You can use the site to "pin" pictures of anything that you find useful. You can follow people and see what they are pinning as well. It's basically twitter for visual people.

Above is a screen shot of my computer when I'm logged into pinterest. The red arrow is pointing to the most useful tool that pinterest gives you, the "Pin It" button. This button allows you to save any web search and put it in organized categories on your pinterest site. Below is a screen shot of my speech and language therapy board. When you pin something, you have to select a picture from the website to pin, then you have the option of typing notes to yourself to remember why you pinned that thing. Once it has been pinned, every time you click on that picture or "pin" it will take you directly to the website where the picture was found.

I have just started using pinterest but the possibilities blow me away! I am LOVING it! You can organize and save your internet research instead of saying, "I remember seeing that somewhere on the internet" or "I found it on some website".

On top of being able to organize your own web searches, you have the option to see what your friends or other people are "pinning". You can also search the pinterest site for pins on specific things like "language" or "articulation" and it will pull up all the pins that have those key words (just like twitter, except you aren't limited to things people have #hashtagged).

*note: if you pin something and don't provide an adequate description it will not be a useful and searchable pin to the public. if you do provide adequate descriptions it helps other who are searching pinterest find your awesome pins.

It would be so great if the SLP community could start pinning more. It would provide such a wonderful variety of therapy ideas. Pinterest is open to the public so you can roam the site and see how you like it before you sign up for an account. I would recommend going to the site and browsing by clicking HERE

On the top left hand corner of the screen there will be a search box where you can search anything and everything. You can even look me up by typing annie_slp in the search box and then clicking on "people" (under the search box there is an option for pins, boards, or people). An AMAZING pinner is PediaStaff. They have soooooo many awesome pins and boards for SLPs and OTs. Here's a glimpse of their pinboards.

Happy Pinning Everyone!