I have been using Instagram as a fun social app for a while now. And of course as soon as I could figure it out, I started brainstorming how I could use it in my world language classroom. Instagram is a social app for photos, where you post post pictures of which you and your friends can leave comments, tag friends, and hashtag as a certain subject.
Here’s a picture I posted from the recent ACTFL conference in Denver. There’s a few things you’ll see:
At the top lists my username, lelises, and the location I marked us in.
People who “like the picture” are next to the heart.
I have tagged one friend with the @ sign.
My comment, next to username lelises shows what I wrote about my own photo, “No taxi necessary.”
And I have classified the subject of the photo with a hashtag, #actfl.
My friend tagged in the photo commented.
Here’s a quick tutorial on the basics:
How can your students use this?
1. Taboo/10,000 Pyramid
After teaching vocabulary, have students post pictures up of certain items that you studied. The pictures can be difficult to guess, so you have them write a description in the target language underneath describing the object. If nobody guesses you can leave another clue. This can be done by the teacher or by the students. Here’s an example: (Please note, I used English here simply as an example.) Read the rest of this entry