I discovered Pinterest, a virtual bookmarking tool, via my Facebook account. One of my Facebook friends started “pinning” images and videos of kitchen remodeling ideas to her board. She encouraged me to “follow” her in order to view her favorite examples of tile, flooring, appliance and lighting selections as she prepared for her home project. Instead of printing out her wish list in a binder or tearing out images from magazines, she organized her ideas into one electronic archive that she could share with family and friends in order to field their opinions on the choice colors of her kitchen cabinets. It’s easy to join Pinterest. You can sign in through either Facebook or Twitter and if you are a member of either of these social networking sites. Let the pinning begin!
Pinterest can inspire us to explore exotic vacations, design homemade crafts and plant organic gardens. The vibrant visuals and boundless creativity is on display for us to capture and save. But for some, pinning can promote insecurity, unrealized dreams and even cause depression. The “I’m not good enough” because I am not knitting socks, cooking a gourmet meal and going on a daily meditative hike in the forest can leave us feeling inadequate. Let’s face it, browsing through beautiful, unrealistic lifestyles can be mentally exhausting. The myth of perfection can be perpetuated by Pinterest.
But Pinterest can provide more than just another glue gun project. For writers, Pinterest offers several resources. There are boards for Keats and Faulkner. There are boards to promote and publish your book. There are boards for identifying parts of speech and tips to help you write your next novel. In one board, “College Composition Classroom Ideas,” teachers can scan a variety of 80 pins including “Feedback Comments for Student Writing,” “A Simple Way to Grading Writing Quickly” and “Ice Breaker Bingo.” It turns out Pinterest is a useful tool for creating vision boards — collecting, storing, and organizing ideas. It’s another electronic sharing spot on the Internet and it’s worth checking out.
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