Students Curating Content: A Collaborative Pinterest Board as the Final Exam

by Ann Abbott

 Students in my "Spanish in the Community" course will do the following for their final exam:
  • Contribute five pins to my Pinterest board called SPAN 232 Spanish in the Community and write a brief reflective essay on this assignment.
  • To choose their pins, students must use this criteria: What information should a student in this course have to help them work in the community, understand better what they observe in the community and contextualize their learning in the community within regional, national and global forces.
  • If you don't know how to pin, go to YouTube or Google and search for tutorials on "How to use Pinterest" or "How to create pins on Pinterest."
  • Each pin must include a relevant description that helps students understand what the pin is and why it is important. When writing the description of your pins, frame them using this question: If a student sees this pin, why should they take the time to click on it? What will he/she gain from clicking on it?
  • Write your descriptions in Spanish--very good Spanish. Use the tutorials and quizzes from MySpanishKit to help you with the grammar.
  • For the reflective essay, write ~100 words about each pin. Please vary the kind of information you include in your reflections: tell why you chose it, why you think it is important, connect it to something specific that you observed or did in the community, explain how it answers a question you had during the semester, link it to something you hear other people say about immigrants/Spanish/students, etc. 
  • To conclude the reflective essay, write a ~100-word conclusion that sums up what you learned from this project.
  • You will add the pins directly to the Pinterest board and upload the reflective essay to Compass. If you cannot pin directly to the board, do the following: 
    • Create your own board and add your pins there.
    • Use the "send" feature in Pinterest to send me your board or each pin. 
  • If you don't have a Pinterest account and do not want to create one, please email me and we will find a solution. I don't want anyone to feel forced into doing something on social media that he/she doesn't want to do.
  • You will be graded on the quality of the writing and the Spanish.
Here is some feedback after seeing the ones that some students have already created:
  • Remember that we don't use the term "inmigrante ilegal" in this course (no human is illegal). Please edit your pins to change that term to "inmigrante indocumentado." 
  • Check and recheck your Spanish! I would suggest writing your descriptions in a Word document and using the Word tools to check your spelling, vocabulary and grammar. This will affect your grade.

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