InstaStory-Telling

It was in August last year that Instagram introduced InstaStories - pictures or short videos  to which users can add stickers, emojis, drawings, filters and what not. InstaStories do not appear in our Feed, but on our profile and in the row on the top of our followers' feed. Our followers can see our InstaStory if they tap on the colorful ring around our profile picture. Most interestingly, Instastories disappear after 24 hours - which is strikingly similar to Snapchat and for which Instagram gives credit to Snapchat. With many new features added to InstaStories on a weekly basis, it has  now become more popular than Snapchat with more than 200 million users per day.

We can save InstaStories and prevent them from disappearing forever. Our followers can post comments to each InstaStory and we can reply to their comments.

I discovered them only recently and immediately fell in love with them. Not only that, but I think InstaStories have huge potential in the classroom. Our students are on Instagram, and so are we, their teachers, so why not make good use of it? At one of my recent workshops in Slovenia, out of 90 teachers from all over Europe, the majority of the attendees responded  they regularly used Facebook and Instagram, whereas only one teacher said she also used Snapchat. So let's leave Snapchat to our students, and let's see how  beneficial InstaStories can be for learning.

If your students are too young to have Instagram, you can open a class account or you can split them in groups and open an account for each group to use in the classroom.

I'm still learning about InstaStories, but here are some ideas for using InstaStories in the classroom. You are welcome to share your ideas in the comments.