Emily Cassels, Carson Taylor, & Izaac Paetz

Instagram as an Educational Resource

Our lesson was focussed on teaching our fellow classmates how to use Instagram as an

educational resource within the classroom. The specifics that we focus on in our presentation are

how to use features, such as, stories, polls, posts, and surveys as a way to monitor student

engagement in the course. The teacher would use the story feature to post quizzes (formative),

surveys as an entrance or exit slip (feedback from students), and post countdown reminders for

deadlines. The notification feature allows users to be notified when others post. This can be

useful for educators as students will get notifications that are reminders related to the class.

There are several ways to implement this in the classroom but notably our group agreed that

Instagram would be best suited for students to use as a portfolio in a photography or arts class.

My group choose Instagram because we felt it offers an opportunity for students to

explore a social media in a safe and monitored way. Students will gain an understanding of

online etiquette and responsibility. For practical uses in the classroom, we choose Instagram

because it provides one space for formative assessments (polls), group study (students post

sample quizzes (stories and respond to 5 others), work submission (posts), feedback

opportunities (comments & surveys), classroom management (post notifications & countdowns),

and it fosters collaboration (comments).

While Instagram does work well for our intended outcomes the technology itself presents

a few challenges in incorporating this technology into a classroom environment. There is no way

to guarantee students are not engaging with non-school related content while accessing

Instagram. With the lack of control, it makes it difficult to manage what students are actually
engaging with online. Using a social media site presents a challenge with popularity contests

arising from the number of likes, followers, and comments one student may or may not have.

Accessibility is also an issue when it comes to Instagram, if students do not have access to

internet, a mobile device, or computer outside of class then this resource loses its effectiveness as

a time management tool when sending out reminders. Instagram also requires users to be 13

years of age before making an account so this resource would not be viable in elementary school

classrooms.

The delivery of the lesson went quite well, our classmates seemed engaged and were able

to successfully access our Instagram page. Once on Instagram the participants were able to

interact with our page and respond to our poll and survey on our story. Because of the age

demographic of our participants, they were for the most part already familiar with using

Instagram’s features. They did find it to be intriguing to look as this website as an educational

tool opposed to a social media website. When we posed our discussion questions it seemed to be

a general consensus that there may be issues with keeping students on task while utilizing

Instagram and access to this technology.

The prep required to incorporate Instagram into the classroom includes, creating a

classroom account, creating students accounts, teaching students how to log into Instagram, and

creating class guidelines for good online behavior. The teacher keeps track of all student’s

login’s, supplies students with technology (computers or mobile devices), and a stable internet

connection.

In choosing a technology to incorporate in the classroom I would do more research into

the age appropriateness of the resource closer before engaging with the resource itself. ClassDojo

is a good alternative to Instagram for students under the age of 13. ClassDojo offers the same
features as Instagram on a secure website where parents, students, and teachers can connect

online to share learning experiences both in the classroom and at home. ClassDojo is targeted

towards pre-kindergarten to elementary grades but can be used for any grade level or discipline.

In my own classroom I would use the notification/reminder feature that can be found on

ClassDojo or Instagram for managing deadlines/time constraints. Within tech use in the

classroom when students have access to technology, I would assign 1 in 5 students (or one per

table group) as the ‘lab monitor’. They would be given a checklist to monitor the other students

progress on the task and also whether or not the students refrained from exploring other websites.