Social Media Tools: Flipgrid, Symbaloo, and Instagram
This week in The Connected Educator we focused on the safety and flexibility that using social media in the classroom can offer. When we think of social media, the first thing that pops to mind is usually Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter. While these front-runner platforms do play a big part in the everyday lives of teachers and students, there are a few others that we looked at that are more education-based.
SAFETY
Safety, both for teachers and students are of the utmost importance when it comes to any social media platform. Following some simple rules as both an adult and student will keep social media a tool that accomplishes a learning task rather than allowing it to be a distracting problem. Teaching specifically aimed at etiquette, school rules and consequences when it comes to web use, and modeling is imperative for social media use in the classroom. Click the yellow box below for an article that offers great tips for both student and teacher when it comes to using social media:
FLIPGRID
If you have never played around with Flipgrid before, you must! This social platform really speaks to the world our student's live in. Videotaping themselves offering feedback to classmates is right up students alleys as more and more of our students are actively using social media platforms like YouTube and Snapchat. Check out THIS quick video explaining what Flipgrid is all about.
In my classroom, I plan to use FlipGrid as a tool for both art history critique and student critique. My intention is to set it up at the beginning of the year and use it routinely at the start of a project by critiquing a major art history artwork and again within a project to peer critique each other's artwork. I think the individuality and privacy of offering feedback to each other one-on-one via Flipgrid is a nice way for students to ease into critique. The fact that this is web-based builds on a skill set the students already have and allows them to build confidence in their voice before transitioning to group and class critiques (which is where I desire them to be by the end of the semester). Check out this quick Adobe Spark video outlining how students get started with a peer critique in my class:
SYMBALOO
I created two different Symbaloo's. One for my students of most-frequently used links in our classroom...
and one for myself of teacher links I frequently use...
On my teacher Symbaloo, I set it as my home screen page on my computer and now whenever I click the home button it pulls the screen quickly linking me to my most utilized web content. I really like this visual organization and will continue to add to it to keep my web content organized.
This coming year I would like to start an Instagram group for my students geared around the book Draw Every Day, Draw Every Way by Jennifer Lewis. I would like to visually document my goal of drawing every day with my students and encourage them to participate as well. Students may elect to get the book and draw along with me and submit their photos as well, although purchasing the book is not necessary. This project will just be for fun, not for a grade, and my hope is it will lure the kids into at least seeing that as an artist I am trying to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, and possibly join in and draw more outside of class. I made sure to create a separate account from my personal one...
My school actively uses Instagram with students, but since this would involve the students putting their sketches up as well I researched how to turn commenting off, at least in the beginning. Here is how to turn off comments. First, select the picture you want to post and edit it. When you get done editing you should be at the share screen...
At the bottom of the screen in very light print see the words ADVANCED SETTINGS>? Click that and then turn off commenting on your picture.
My students will use the hashtag #dedlsw (Draw Every Day Lees Summit West) to add their own entries to my daily posts. This could also be done on Twitter as well and it is easy from this share page to have the same post shared to both platforms at the same time.
Well, that's it for this week! Happy social sharing!
Mrs. J
Comments
Post a Comment