We have a class Instagram account now, and many of my students have created Twitter or Instagram accounts for their Digital Scrapbook.
Students have begun documenting their journey as a fictional character, modeled after our novel, Daniel’s Story. Their posts have been quite remarkable and have required research to factually represent their created experiences as a Jewish person in WWII. They have been including historical facts as well as their own anecdotes to create their digital journal.
A few things that have come up along the way that I was not expecting (both good and challenging):
- Creating student accounts was seamless. Students knew what to do and used their school division device and email address to do so
- Many students are concerned with privacy, so their real names are left off of the account and they require following permissions
- A few posts have been deleted due to content and following Instagram’s guidelines. Having a fake persona and discussing Holocaust content has pinged a few of the terms and conditions algorithms!
- With posts being private, it is difficult for everyone to see, however it is about student safety and comfortability above everything else!
- Students have been following other accounts in the class and collaborating with journeys and “liking” each other’s posts. We have not even discussed following other accounts in the classroom, but they took it upon themselves which I think is really cool!
Here are two accounts: Student A and Student B that do not have the privacy settings set high.
One student decided to include that this is an assignment for school in her Bio to help with any concerns of content.
An example of a Twitter account created for this project can be found here:
A few concerns and thoughts about how I would adapt this assignment in the future:
- Ensuring students are using copyright free images in their posts has been at the forefront of our discussions in class, but difficult to monitor from a teacher’s perspective
- With so many accounts across a variety of social media platforms, it is hard to track and monitor all students using the digital version of this assignment. My original thought process was having it wide open to students to choose their platform, but for teacher’s sake-of-ease, I might choose to have students only use Instagram or Twitter.
- A few students have posted to their stories, but they lose that content after 24 hours – a learning curve for all of us!
- An assignment like this takes a great deal of trust and relationship building with students to give them the power to be on social media in the classroom while actually working and not simply scrolling through and mindlessly consuming content all day!
That is all for now! Thanks for reading!
Dalton Danaher 
You are so creative. And also – could you have possibly picked harder content to have students navigate thoughtfully, carefully, and respectfully?! I love the digital literacy your students are displaying – with the understanding it is probably incredibly important to note that these messages are role-play/fiction for the purpose of an assignment. Context in online interactions and online displays of learning is so important.
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Thanks, Victoria. They are doing really well. It has added a whole new dimension to the classroom and the way we have framed the assignment, it really opens up a few new doors to some students that otherwise don’t take this type of content or unit seriously. I have really enjoyed seeing their curiosity and willingness to explore this type of assignment. In past grad classes, students have been aware that the integration of a particular tool was a part of my continued lifelong learning, however this time, students do not know the reason why we are integrating social media in the classroom – and amazingly, both times, students still participate with the same eagerness and excitement! Thanks for reading!
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