5 Social Apps for Collaboration in Your Class and Team!
1. Marco Polo
Description
Marco Polo is an app that allows users to send short videos asynchronously to their friends or groups of friends (“Smart Social,” 2020). Users can only send messages to people with whom they have their number, except when added to a group by a mutual friend. This app is particularly helpful for students that have strange schedules and may need to view the videos later. There are several benefits to this:
1. Students can rewatch videos (they don’t go away after they have been watched).
2. Students can send video questions to the teacher and receive responses.
3. Videos can be viewed live or later.
4. You can create groups to send specific videos to specific classes.
5. The video element adds quite a bit of personality to the class communications.
6. The app also has “voice-only” or “text-only” messaging options.
7. It could be helpful for small group collaborating, particularly in science classes (Falloon, 2017).
Warnings
As with any video messaging app, some students may lack reliable internet access at home or at school, making it difficult to communicate. By using this app for important communication, it also furthers the digital divide for students without adequate technology access (Alt, 2017). Some other considerations include:
1. There is no way to edit or preview student videos in a group. The person that starts the group message does not have any power to delete inappropriate messages (“Smart Social,” 2020).
2. Students can message each other on the app without teacher oversight in private messages, which of course, could be a challenge (Virginia Commonwealth University, n.d.).
Safeguards:
1. One great way to protect students is to ensure that parents are monitoring their students’ social networks.
2. As with all apps, students should agree to behavioral and school-appropriate guidelines for the use of the app. Teachers should be very clear about the expectations for student behavior.
Here are some helpful links for Marco Polo:
2. Virginia Commonwealth University’s review of Marco Polo
3. A YouTube tutorial on how to use Marco Polo
2. Snapchat
Description
Snapchat is a social media app that can be used to communicate with others through pictures, videos, and text messages. The unique element of Snapchat is that the settings usually make all messages disappear after they have been viewed (although the viewer can take a snapshot) (Ochs, 2021). There are a few ways these could be used to help connect students:
1. Send out announcements.
2. Students can personalize messages through drawing on their snaps, adding text, and/or recording their work to collaborate.
Warnings
Snapchat has received a lot of publicity because of the potentially dangerous nature of the perceived privacy of the app (Ochs, 2021). Many students send inappropriate messages or pictures with the thought that they will not be seen by their parents and is deleted. As with all apps, parents need to monitor who their children are communicating with on the app. Other considerations include the following:
1. Cyberbulling can be a concern because of the anonymity and the fact that students can message eachother who are not necessarily friends (Charteris, et al., 2018).
2. Students can share to a public forum, which opens them up to interactions with strangers.
Safeguards
As with all apps, parental oversight is necessary to keep students and children safe. Additionally, it is wise to consider the following:
1. Discuss safeguards for the students and ensure that parents are aware of the apps being used in class (Ochs, 2021).
2. Identify the long-term conseuqneces that are possible when using social media, and that their content is never truly gone (Ochs, 2021).
Here are some other helpful links that you can connect to for information on snapchat.
1. Snapchat
2. YouTube Tutorial for using SnapChat
3. Connect Safely’s Parent Guide to SnapChat
3. Flipgrid
Description
FlipGrid is an app that was created specifically for the classroom. As a result, there is a high degree of teacher control. Students can record themselves, add filters and text similar to snap chat, and submit to a shared platform. The teacher can assign prompts and respond in video or text publically or privately. When it is set to “public” it only means that the other students in that class can see it. Encouragingly, studies show that video apps like Flipgrid help increase student engagement and confidence (Johnson & Skarphol, 2018). Some helpful classroom uses for Flipgrid include the following items:
1. Students can create stop-motion videos (Edwards, 2020).
2. Top videos can be organized into a “Mixtape” which can be helpful for student review (Edwards, 2020).
Warnings
Students can sometimes be distracted by the creative elements of the app, so they need to be reminded to stay on task.
Safeguards
Students need to be reminded to produce content that is only school-appropriate. This can be assured through the following measures:
1. Teachers can set the app to only allow posting after they have been viewed by the teacher.
2. Teachers should communicate with parents and students about the appropriate use of resources for the classroom.
Here are some helpful links for Flipgrid!
1. Flipgrid App
4. TikTok
Description
TikTok is an app used to create and view short video clips. Music is often used as part of the video, and it is a highly-addictive platform that students are using in their daily lives. The app is recommended for ages 15+, but can be accessed by younger ages (Ucciferri, n.d.). The content is curated for certain ages. There are some fun classroom applications, including:
1. TikTok videos could help engage students in creative ways (Hayes et al., 2020).
2. TikTok videos could help increase student interest in the subject matter (Hayes et al., 2020).
Warnings
There are many concerns for TikTok. There is the challenge to adjust the videos being shown. It is extremely difficult to edit out inappropriate videos, and according to The Wall Street Journal (2021), the algorithm guesses what to show you based on what you spend more time watching. Other considerations include the following:
1. There is no way to ensure that students are not using inappropriate sound bytes or music for their videos.
2. Students who lie about their age can access messaging and other content inappropriate for their age.
3. There are no real ways for parents to control the content that their child sees on the app (Ucciferri, n.d.).
Safeguards
It is important that a parent or guardian is supervising the students’ use of the app and communicating in regards to expectations for its use. The additional safeguards should be in place:
1. Ensure that the age of the student is accurate on the app (Uncciferri, n.d.).
2. Frequently supervise the use of the app.
Link to the app and/or other helpful resources.
1. How to Use Tiktok for education YouTube Video.
2. TikTop App
5-Twitter
Description
Twitter is an online social media platform that allows people to communicate in 280 characters or less. The tweets are sent out to the site, and anyone from anywhere can read them and respond, so long as they also have an account. There are several ways Twitter can be useful in the classroom:
1. Students can engage with real conversations happening around the world that relate to the topic they are studying (Chawinga, 2017).
2. Students can contact government officials or authors that they are reading about/studying.
3. Teachers and students can engage in information sharing (Finn, et al., 2020).
Warnings
Twitter is an open platform, so anyone on the internet can see the students’ tweets. As a result, great care needs to be used before having students create a digital footprint that is likely to follow them. Other considerations include the following:
1. Students need to be aware that anyone can see their posts.
2. Students and teachers need to be aware that anyone on the internet can contact them via their Twitter handle (Chawinga, 2017).
Safeguards
Because this is an open platform, parent and teacher supervision needs to be incredibly apparent. Additionally, educators should evaluate the age and maturity of students before encouraging them to communicate on any platform that is open for the public. Other safeguards are as follows.
1. Educators can turn off location services (so that their posts are not connected to a location).
2. Students should be explicitly trained to keep communications from including private information.
Some helpful resources are linked here:
1. YouTube Tutorial for Twitter in the Classroom
2. Twitter.com
References
Alt, D. (2017). Students' social media engagement and fear of missing out (FoMO) in a diverse classroom. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 29(2), 388-410. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1007/s12528-017-9149-x
Charteris, J., Gregory, S., & Masters, Y. (2018). 'snapchat', youth subjectivities and sexuality: Disappearing media and the discourse of youth innocence. Gender and Education, 30(2), 205-221. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2016.1188198
Chawinga, W. D. (2017). Taking social media to a university classroom: teaching and learning using Twitter and blogs: Revista de Universidad y Sociedad del Conocimiento. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 14, 1-19. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1186/s41239-017-0041-6
Edwards, L. (2020, August 13). Best flipgrid tips and tricks for teachers and students. Tech & Learning. https://www.techlearning.com/how-to/best-flipgrid-tips-and-tricks-for-teachers-and-students
Falloon, G. (2017). Mobile Devices and Apps as Scaffolds to Science Learning in the Primary Classroom. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 26(6), 613-628. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1007/s10956-017-9702-4
Finn, G. M., Brown, M. E. L., Laughey, W., & Dueñas, A. (2020). Pandemicpedagogy: Using twitter for knowledge exchange. Medical Education, 54(12), 1190-1191. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.14242
Hayes, C., Stott, K., Lamb, K. J., & Hurst, G. A. (2020). “Making every second count”: Utilizing TikTok and systems thinking to facilitate scientific public engagement and contextualization of chemistry at home. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(10), 3858-3866. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00511
Johnson, M., Skarphol, M., (2018). The effects of digital portfolios and flipgrid on student engagement and communication in a connected learning secondary visual arts classroom. Retrieved from Sophia, the St. Catherine University repository website: https://sophia.stkate.edu/maed/270
Ochs, J. (2021, February 21). Snapchat app 2021 parent guide. Smart social. https://smartsocial.com/snapchat/
Smart social. (2020, March 26). Marco polo app guide. https://smartsocial.com/marco-polo-app-guide/
The Wall Street Journal Staff. (2021, July 21). Inside TikTok’s algorithm: A WSJ video investigation. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-algorithm-video-investigation-11626877477
Virginia Commonwealth University. (n.d.). Marco polo app. The virginia adult resource learning center. https://valrc.org/learning/techtools/MP.html
Ucciferri, F. (n.d.). Parents' ultimate guide to tiktok. Common sense media. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/parents-ultimate-guide-to-tiktok