Instagram and Hashtags: Connecting with Social Media

By Nina Kendall

 

July 4th Bingo with the Archives

Instagram offers opportunities to engage students in new and different ways.  Schools and teachers can follow institutions like the National Archives and the National Gallery in using media to engage audiences with observation and curation activities. Here a few thoughts if you are interested in giving it a try.

Hashtags

Embrace the Hashtag

Hashtags are like guide words in a card catalog or key words in a Boolean search as they help you find things.  Using a hashtag allows you to find thoughts and images on a similar topic. 

 

  

Create your own Hashtags with Instagram Assignments

 Use them when you create an assignment so you can enjoy student shares without having to follow students. Make the hashtag as unique as possible so your search will have less cross contamination in the results.

Let students craft their own Hashtags

Have students create their own hashtags when analyzing texts or creating diagrams. Their choices will reflect their understanding of the work. You could even have students create hashtags to reflect different perspectives and have students look for evidence to support that hashtag and perspective.

 

 

Instagram

 

 

Let Students craft the Vision

Have you ever started a lesson with a modern image or phrase to help students connect with the past and then found they didn’t know the modern image? We know that students are more likely to remember something when they can relate it to something learned previously. Instagram can help you engage students in building hooks for units and lessons. Assign a topic like “cooperation.” Have students share images that represent cooperation to them. Use those images as a hook for discussing how communities reacted to Civil Rights change as you study the 20^th century.
 

Make the world your classroom.
Instagram lets students engage in observations of the world around them. Students capture and share images that become a text to relate what they are learning to and share with others.

 

Examples:



Student observations of  modern food landscape

·Have students take pictures of the modern cultural landscape and compare to works about the same area from a different period. The Federal Writer’s Project has some great texts to use for comparison.
 

·   Going on a field trip? Don’t assign a worksheet. Give students a list of things to photograph on the trip and assign a hashtag for the trip. Students can share their day with others and comment on what others saw. Then with a program like Storify you can have a slide show to view as class the next day.

 

These ideas represent just a few of the ways you could use hashtags and Instagram in class. What ideas do you have?