Using Pinterest as a Video Resource Aggregation Tool

Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/) is a virtual pin board where users can organize and share items of interest found online. I have been using it to create visual collections such as educational infographics and examples of special technique videos for some of my courses. My Pinterest boards can be viewed here:  http://pinterest.com/csnelsonbsu/

Here are some observations from my experiences thus far with Pinterest:

• The Pinterest bookmarklet is very handy for quickly pinning websites from the browser. For more information about installing the bookmarklet visit:  http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/
• In order to pin a website it must have a large picture or video. Otherwise it won't work. However, it is possible to upload a picture and add a link manually. 
• Pinterest boards provide a visual way to develop teaching collections to illustrate an idea. For example, this board of time-lapse videos shows several different ways that time-lapse might be used to illustrate an educational idea:  http://pinterest.com/csnelsonbsu/time-lapse-videos/ 
• We can collect videos from all around the Web in a "visual playlist." This is kind of liberating as we can collect from anywhere instead of being limited to content from specific sites. 
• Some sites don't allow content to be pinned. I encountered this problem on the National Geographic videos site. 
• We can find other good collections to follow by searching, checking follower content, or reviewing collections of those who like or repin our boards. This may be a good way to grow a collection quickly. 

Overall, my experience has been good with Pinterest. It has been valuable as a place to collect visual content  examples such as time-lapse and stop motion videos. I use these collections in a course I teach that covers educational video production. 

Here is a Pinterest Basics Tutorial from YouTube. It will give you an idea of what you will most likely encounter if you try Pinterest. The site appears to be evolving and you may have a slightly different experience than what you see in the video. Good luck!