Five Ideas for using Instagram in the Classroom

I have always been a huge fan of taking pictures, and now technology has made this hobby even more easy and entertaining. Our students have the world at their fingertips with Smart Phones, and are constantly snapping pictures, editing, and uploading their lives online. I found a list of lesson ideas that you can use with your students that will encourage creativity, critical thinking, and writing, along with having the fun of Instagram to use for school assignments.

1. Digital Storytelling: The students have the option of taking pictures from their neighborhood, and they can tell their story visually, annotating it through comments on each picture.

2. Grammar Practice: Students will take pictures, write sentence captions underneath, and then label each part of the sentence.

3. Photojournalism: Students will choose a school sporting event, a classroom community service activity, or a local election to photograph and analyze while using their mobile device to express their social voice.

4. Find the Context: Students will document math as they see it in their world.... linear relationships, data, fractions, etc.

5. Ethnographic Study: More of a social studies activity, blending writing and pictures. Students will take photographs of the spaces they inhabit and then analyze the cultural, political, social, and economic elements that define the space.