Sunday, June 21, 2015

Wham, bam, Instagram!

If you haven't done so already, your publication can get a lot of mileage out of an Instagram account. In fact, some advisers argue that Instagram is more useful and relevant than other social media because a lot of high school students are starting to abandon Facebook and don't really know how to use Twitter.

Instagram is allowing high school publications to do their own version of Humans of New York. It's getting more of our student populations' voices in our work. And it just feels like 21st Century journalism, because on the spot, our reporters can take a photo or a short video, conduct a brief interview (maybe even just one question), and post right away.

I laugh now when I think back to originally telling my staff that we didn't need Instagram. Now, it's one of our most popular features.

Looking back at our Instagram feed, @centraltimes, I notice a lot of video lately, which students love to not only post but watch repeatedly and share. Here are a few examples:

Clip of a choir concert performance

Clip of a state gymnastics meet

All you need is to allow your students to use their own smartphones to cover school events!

How is your staff using Instagram? Let's talk about some success stories as well as some ideas. And if you're not on Instagram, give it some serious consideration.

Keith Carlson
Naperville Central High School
Naperville, Ill.





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4 comments:

  1. UnknownJune 21, 2015 at 7:52 PM

    Thanks for posting about this, Keith. First of all, I was under the impression that Instagram did only photos, so that goes to show what I know. Ideally, students should be able to gather short, interesting, worthwhile photos and videos quite easily, making our publication more relevant. Plus, even if we're in between stories or don't have something else to post for a couple of days, an active Instagram account would help to keep us relevant.

    Have you considered using Instagram to take photos of the site itself--say, a compelling headline or photo--to help drive more people to your site? Would that be worthwhile, or sort of messy and redundant?

    David Gwizdala
    James B. Conant High School
    Hoffman Estates, Illinois

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJune 21, 2015 at 9:35 PM

    I love the idea of using InstaGram, but my students number one complaint is that they can only have one IG account on their phones. They have to log out and log back in when they want to change accounts. That is very frustrating for them when they want to get a news story out quickly. I wish IG would fix that...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mr. RewriteJune 23, 2015 at 8:55 PM

    Great examples. Instagram video interests me. I hadn't even heard of it until a student used it on election night. Now I see all kinds of possibilities.

    Steve Elliott
    Arizona State University
    Phoenix

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJune 25, 2015 at 9:42 PM

    I love using Instagram, but getting my students to use it for our publication is a whole other story. You've encouraged me to push them on using Instagram this year!

    ReplyDelete

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