Social media platforms. So many. Hard to keep up. How are we ever going to be able to teach everything?
My answer to this dilemma is: let your students take the lead and leverage on their experiences.
It’s impossible to always be using the same social media platforms as your students. I know because I’ve encountered this. I use Facebook a lot, and then now I’m using Twitter for academic purposes. But my experience teaching Malaysian students was that they didn’t use either platform and preferred using Instagram, which I utterly dislike (I don’t like Twitter either but can’t be helped. It has made itself more ubiquitously useful despite being a nuisance to me). As far as social media use is concerned, most of the time students already have some fundamental knowledge so it can be a matter of harnessing what they already have.
For example, if I had to teach a class on vlogging and podcasts (and I do neither), I would ask students who their favourite vloggers and podcasters are. Famous social media influencers are examples of quality material which work, so use them as examples – it will also make you come across as cooler to your students (it makes them think you are in-tune with what they like as opposed to trying but missing the mark) and they will enjoy the interactivity.
If I had internet access for the class, I could even play podcasts / vlogs of their choice then the whole class can analyse them together. If not, get students to have discussions about the vlogs / podcasts they like (I presume that people in their cohort may have common interests, best if there are actual examples which everybody can watch / listen together of course), ask them what they like, analyse their strengths and weaknesses etc. Facilitate discussion, ask questions.
