vocab videos. It was the proof of concept that I’d hoped for. The problem was that our six classroom iPads just weren’t up to the task yet. Creating, sharing, and viewing the videos was not as easy as I’d hoped. Plus, I hadn’t yet found the perfect tool for creating looping videos. The idea was a bit ahead of its time.
In the end, the lesson was a bit of a bust. But a new seed was planted deep inside my teacher’s soul.
You Don’t Need the App to Create the Experience
Think about what hooks students on their favorite apps:
Social media apps let them share their lives with an audience of their peers and keep tabs on what everyone else is doing, saying, wearing, and eating.
Game apps challenge students and occupy their free time. Students get bragging rights when they reach higher scores than their friends.
News apps keep them up to speed with pop culture, sports, fashion, and so on.
Interested in recreating the experience of an app like I did with Vine? It takes just a few steps:
1 Learn about the app’s features. You don’t have to be an expert. You need only a basic understanding and some key details.
2 Figure out what’s captivating your students. Is it the social element? A creative outlet? A competition? Something hilarious? A way to develop and showcase a talent?
3 Identify some of its signature elements. Start with the logo: the colors, the shapes, the typography. Look at its interface: the buttons, the positioning of items on the screen, the lingo. Observe how students interact with the app: by tapping, swiping, shaking?
4 Start tinkering. Maybe you start with a digital tool that’s familiar to you and your students, and begin adding pieces of the app to it. Maybe you seek out a new tool or site that creates a similar experience, and start tweaking it to resemble the students’ favorite app.
I followed this process to effectively recreate parts of two popular apps—Instagram and Snapchat. You can use them as examples for creating your own app-inspired learning experiences.
In the Spotlight: Instagram Stories without Instagram
Instagram is a social media behemoth. Its users love shooting photos and videos, applying filters to make them look just right, and sharing them with the world. It’s just one of the social media and other apps that many students are familiar with.
Instagram Stories is a popular feature, and it’s a great storytelling tool. Users capture brief moments of their lives in photo or video and string the images together for others to watch one by one. That’s the hook for Instagram Stories: an easy-to-use tool for sharing special moments and showing some creativity at the same time.
The potential classroom uses for a feature like Instagram Stories are countless. For example, how cool would it be to show the Instagram Story Juliet would post after Romeo’s demise in Romeo and Juliet? How cool would it be to capture a science lab with an Instagram Story?
How can we mimic the Instagram Stories experience without the app? Can we find an option that lets us avoid problems like age restrictions, firewalls, and lack of access to mobile devices? Absolutely! Let’s recreate the experience with a digital tool that many students have access to: Google Slides or PowerPoint.
Many students, young and old, are familiar with it—or are familiar with programs that have a similar user interface.
This highlights an important point when selecting technology to recreate an app’s experience (or do anything in the classroom). Whenever possible, use tech that students already know. You won’t have to teach them a new tool and work through the learning curve. If they already know the app, program, or platform, you can get right to the business of learning.
To simulate the experience of Instagram Stories, I first created a template on Google Slides. Students can open the template, and add images and videos. When they’re done, they can use presentation mode for the slides to create the Instagram Stories experience.
Want to try it?
Download the templates for your students and view step-by-step instructions at DitchThatTextbook.com/instagramstories. By the way, PowerPoint can recreate the same experience, and it’s a great option if your students have greater access to Microsoft products.
The process is pretty simple. You can replicate it in your own classroom or while working with adults in professional development. Just follow these steps:
1 Choose a digital tool that fits your planned activity well. In this case, I chose Google Slides because I wanted students to add images and video, move items around, and have multiple pages (slides).
2 Design a template, simulating the app as closely as possible. In this case, I used shapes and text from Google Slides and free icons from the Noun Project (thenounproject.com). I examined each individual part of the Instagram Stories screen on the app and looked for a way to recreate it.
3 Test the process yourself to make sure students will be able use it as planned.
4 Assign the template to students. I attached the slides to a Google Classroom assignment and chose “Make a copy for each student” on the attachment. Many learning management systems (Canvas, Schoology, and others) have similar options when working with slide presentations.
5 Let students create! Have them plan out their Instagram Stories and then start adding images and videos. When they’re finished, they can turn them in, but don’t let the fun end there!
6 Encourage students share their work. They can show one another their stories on their own devices, share links with classmates, or even present in front of the class using a display or projector.
What would this look like in class? How could students demonstrate their skills and proficiency with Instagram Stories? Allow your mind to roam! Here are a few ideas:
Exploring characters from a story you’ve read. How would they react to the story’s events in an Instagram Story?
Exploring historical figures. How would those figures show what happened in an Instagram Story?
Replaying a science lab. How could students show various parts of the lab?
Demonstrating a skill. How could students teach others with photos and video?
Charting “a day in the life.” How could students share what happens in their daily lives?
Warming up for the first day/week back to school. How could students get to know one another better?
Practicing a foreign language. How could students get repetitions in the spoken/written language?
