Tech Tip: Pinterest Search and Pin Pages

Although most people don't think about Pinterest as educational technology, it really is a great research tool. Since I started using Pinterest a couple of years ago (here are my Boards), I have found it to be a fun and useful way to discover online resources, especially when I am first starting to study a topic. For this Tech Tip, you will pick some topic you want to research with Pinterest, and see what you come up with. You need to have a Pinterest Board set up for this class already; if you don't, do the Pinterest Board Tech Tip first.

Because Pinterest has literally billions of pins now, the Search feature at Pinterest can be really useful. Even better: each Pinterest pin has a page of its own that is full of information and recommendations, so you can use these "pin pages" (for both your own pins and other people's pins) in order to investigate and learn more about any topic. Here's some more information to help you use Pinterest as a search tool:

PINTEREST SEARCH. There's a Pinterest Search box along the top of the Pinterest.com page. Go ahead and type something in the search box and see what comes up. If I search for dragons, for example, I get lots of pins that have something to do with dragons. You can also refine the search by searching just "your pins" or by searching for people ("pinners") or by searching for entire Boards related to dragons:

INDIVIDUAL PIN PAGE. For the research I do at Pinterest, the information on the individual pin pages is the most useful to me. Every pin has a page of its own, so go ahead and click on one of the pins from your search results to explore the features of the pin page. Here are the key things to notice:

Link to original webpage. When you are looking at a pin page, there are THREE different ways that will take you back to the original webpage: you can click on "Visit Site" above the image, you can click on the image itself, or you can click on the abbreviated URL that shows up below the image. All three options will take you to the original webpage, which is obviously the best way to learn more about that image.

For example, if you look at the screenshot below from a pin page at my Myth-Folklore Board, you can see a beautiful picture of African cave art, and the original webpage at the British Museum provides detailed information about where the image was found and how it fits into larger traditions of African rock art carving. So, always remember to click on a pin image (or use the Visit Site button or the URL link) to learn more:

Related Boards. As pins get added to Boards, Pinterest looks to see if that same pin appears in other people's Boards, which can be a great way to find Boards (and people) focused on the topic you are researching. If you can find someone who is actively pinning on a topic of interest to you, their Board can be a fantastic resource. You can follow their Board and/or you can repin their pins to your own Board. In this example, for example, the same rock art painting appears on these other boards, which are potentially of interest to me. So, as I look through those Boards, I find that I am very interested in the first one that Pinterest recommended: a "Petroglyphs and Cave Paintings" Board — it has over 500 pins! Whoever created that Board is obviously very passionate about this topic, and I can rely on that person's knowledge to help me find lots of petroglyph and cave paintings to pin to my own Board:

Related Pins. In addition to looking for the same image at other Boards, Pinterest tries to guess what the pin is about so that it can share "related pins" with you. Depending on the pin image, Pinterest might be really successful at guessing what you are interested in. For this rock art pin, Pinterest did an excellent job of finding lots of beautiful rock art pins at other Boards for me to look at. 

More from the Source. In addition to the related Boards and pins, you can look in the right-hand sidebar of the page to see some pins that come from the same web source as the pin you are investigating. In the case of this cave art painting from the British Museum, the "more from the source" shows me lots of other pins from the British Museum that I will enjoy browsing.

Click and Connect: To finish this Tech Tip, do some investigating and browsing related to some topic you want to learn more about. So, start by putting something in the search box, and then go to a pin page, and then explore related Boards and related pins, pinning the items you like until you have pinned several new things at your Board. If you are finding lots and lots of pins, you might even want to create a new Board just for this topic. You can have as many Pinterest Boards as you want, and you can see that I have created quite a few different Boards for different topics.

Blog post. When you are done, you should have added some new pins (maybe even a lot of new pins!) to your own Pinterest Board. Use the information and images you have found to write up a blog post about the results of your search, including image(s) and link(s) for the best items that you found. To finish up, make sure to include the phrase "Tech Tip: Pinterest Research" in your blog post title and use "Tech Tip" as the label on the post; then you can do the Declaration.