Move over, Facebook! If you teach middle or high schoolers, you know that Instagram is one of the most popular social media channels for teens and tweens today. And while it may not seem like it at first, there are many applications for Instagram in the classroom.
Of course, it's important to protect students' privacy, especially when using a public channel like Instagram. If you're interested in trying any of the ideas below, we recommend creating a classroom account that you set to "private" and carefully vetting any potential followers. You might also try adapting our suggestions to an educational social media platform such as Edmodo. Finally, be sure to check your school's technology policies before you begin.
OK, disclaimer over! Here are 10 awesome ways you can use Instagram in the classroom.
Putting concepts in context. Sarah Smith-Robbins, director of learning technologies and a marketing instructor in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, thinks social media can help take learning out of the classroom. "I want students to see the concepts that we're talking about in class not just as things that are important when we're in class, but as things that are important in their lives," she said. "Because these tools live in their pockets and I can give them reasons to be on the lookout for content to curate for the course, it helps them think through the application of the concepts from class."
Helping instructors keep course content up-to-date. Smith-Robbins teaches digital and social mediamarketing. "It's a topic that changes so rapidly that we're constantly encountering new resources, new tools, new sources of information, and it is impossible for me to keep up with them alone," she said. "So I recruit my students to help do that and to curate sources for the class, and I'm able to use those in the class, and they use them themselves."
Fostering a sense of community both in and out of the classroom. "We have more presence to one another between classes," said Smith-Robbins. "It's an ongoing conversation that happens between classes and we didn't have that before."
Social media has changed the way people communicate and share information in their personal and professional lives. It's a safe bet that most students in any college classroom have used or are familiar with sites like Facebook and Twitter. Yet surprisingly, some instructors have felt resistance from students when they try to incorporate common social media tools into the classroom.
"For a lot of them, it's their friends on Twitter, and they don't really want to share their homework or talk with their teacher on Twitter," said Seth Dixon, an assistant professor of geography at Rhode Island College. "When I announced that I wanted them using Twitter and connecting things and using class hashtags, they gave me this look of, 'Oh, no!' like their mom was on Facebook now."
