Instagram

Instagram is an increasingly popular platform for social media designed to share images and videos. It is operated by Facebook, Inc. and was launched in October 2010. Users can upload images and videos which can be edited with different filters and organized with tags which usually using the hashtag '#' symbol and comments. Posts can be shared publicly or to followers. Users can browse other users’ content by tags and locations, and view the trending content. Users can also ‘like’ photos and follow other users to add their content to a feed. It also has one features that we call as “Story”. In that Story, we can upload pictures, videos, make a poll, as question and many more. Since Instagram is very famous and most of their user are at young and middle ages, it is very suitable to be used as one of educational tools.

Instagram have several benefits toward teachers, students and parents. The benefits are: -

For Teachers: Teachers can create private Instagram account for their students and parent. From this, they can upload picture of any information, task or pictures regarding to the teaching and learning process. Besides, teachers can use Instagram to support students. Teachers can post reminders of homework and tasks, as well as post picture-by-picture tutorials. Via the comments section, teachers can promote communication with the students and give comment regarding on their works or questions. Lastly, teacher can use all the features that provided by Instagram as their teaching tools such as poll, questions or even they can ask their student’s opinions. From that, teachers can scale their student’s knowledge about certain topics that has been learnt.

For Students: Students can upload the picture of their work through Instagram. From that, they can share knowledge between each other. They also can make discussion in the comment sections with the teacher and classmate. Next, student can answer question or poll that have been made by teacher in Story sections. By this, they can know their level of knowledge of that subject.

For Parents: Parent can see all of activity that have been done by their child by seeing the post and stories that had been uploaded by teacher or any students. Parents also can communicate with the teacher through the direct message.

Here is the video on how to use Instagram.

In conclusion, Instagram really have great contribution in conveying visual topics in teaching and learning process. Since it is easy to use, it also very fun. Teachers should give a try to use this Web 2.0 as their educational tools.

References

William Antonelli. (2020). A beginner's guide to Instagram, the wildly popular photo-sharing app with over a billion users. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-instagram-how-to-use-guide