I have been taking a class for my graduate program talking about the use of social media in the classroom. This class has forced me out of my comfort zone in many ways, as I have previously discussed, I am very much a social media wallflower. On thing that I was very excited about when signing up for this class was the possibility of using Instagram in my classroom. Last week my class was assigned the task of using a new social media community, and I decided that I had my chance to start a class Instagram page. Though I have used Instagram for my personal life for many years, creating and managing a Instagram profile for my class has been a interesting process.
The Instagram page has been a very powerful tool even in my short time using it. I have found three main benefits from the class' page.
The biggest struggle so far have been safety and privacy concerns. I do not want to share images of my students or their work with the public nor do I want students exposed to inappropriate content that may be in comment sections of appropriate Instagram profiles. To avoid those problems I have set up the profile with no followers and I only use the class projector to show the images that I have uploaded, protecting students privacy and safety.
This create a new problem with limiting student access and relegates Instagram to a digital buliytinboard. To solve this I now copy posts to my class' Edmodo page where they can access pictures and leave comments, parents can also access the pictures through the Edmodo page. This work around allows me to use Instagram's user-friendly photo editing to create engaging pictures for the kids and protect the class though the Edmodo safeguards.
I have also been trying to use IFTTT.com to create automate the process of transferring the images form Instagram to Edmodo. When I upload a picture to Instagram IFTTT will upload the same image to my google drive, where it is much easier to transfer them to Edmodo. It is not perfect but the automation from IFTTT saves me one step for each photo I upload.
I am looking forward to continue my Instagram/Edmodo experiment and have been very encouraged by the outcomes so far. I hope that students will soon start uploading their own content so that they can take ownership for the profile.
The Instagram page has been a very powerful tool even in my short time using it. I have found three main benefits from the class' page.
- Share and celebrate students for their accomplishments
- Share and use student work as exemplars
- Connect with engaging, informative, and visually appealing content
The biggest struggle so far have been safety and privacy concerns. I do not want to share images of my students or their work with the public nor do I want students exposed to inappropriate content that may be in comment sections of appropriate Instagram profiles. To avoid those problems I have set up the profile with no followers and I only use the class projector to show the images that I have uploaded, protecting students privacy and safety.
This create a new problem with limiting student access and relegates Instagram to a digital buliytinboard. To solve this I now copy posts to my class' Edmodo page where they can access pictures and leave comments, parents can also access the pictures through the Edmodo page. This work around allows me to use Instagram's user-friendly photo editing to create engaging pictures for the kids and protect the class though the Edmodo safeguards.
I have also been trying to use IFTTT.com to create automate the process of transferring the images form Instagram to Edmodo. When I upload a picture to Instagram IFTTT will upload the same image to my google drive, where it is much easier to transfer them to Edmodo. It is not perfect but the automation from IFTTT saves me one step for each photo I upload.
I am looking forward to continue my Instagram/Edmodo experiment and have been very encouraged by the outcomes so far. I hope that students will soon start uploading their own content so that they can take ownership for the profile.