Rethinking Education #2 - Instagram i love you - Casey Neistat

Casey’s a cool dude, no doubt. Has some great insights to the wide world around us and how our lives intersect technology. With his vast social media presence, he has developed some terrific ways to interact with the various mediums of social media and I think what he goes into with Instagram is, on the whole, valid. He outlined some guidelines for its usage and they reflect well with the photographic medium that it is - don’t flood the world with images, just provide a themed approach once or twice a day. Fast forward 4 years and it’s plain to see that Instagram is still going strong, but perhaps the fervor has died down some.
    I’ve been an Instagram user off and on the past couple years, as most of my photo sharing was done with the jack-of-all-trades Facebook. However, as my bio says, I found it a place to share images of “Critters from big to small that creep and crawl. Magical places from this weird and wonderful world.” Nice snippits of the things I had seen while out exploring. There are 10s of pictures of insects I had found on hikes, including some macro shots using some of those snap-on lenses for smartphones. Along with these there are scenes of the oddball roadside attractions I like to visit. Instagramming these little things became another hobby that I was collectively engaging with with a huge amount of people. I follow artists I like and friends from Facebook; this however, describes my personal use of it, not how I approached it as an educator.
    There was a funny moment within my assist period early on in my clinical practice. The students had dispersed around the classroom, working on digital chemistry problems. Some of the students asked me to come over to their table for help on something - a request I had to oblige. Before I realize what’s happened, one of the students has grabbed my name badge and informs his comrades that my first name was Grant. “Crums and carrots!” I thought. I had been duped! They found my personal Instagram account - not that there were any inappropriate photos on it, but I keep it fairly personal between myself and my friends. As a response, I created a new Instagram specifically for profession as an educator; it would be something that my students could follow and fellow educators could pull resources from.


C. (2012). Retrieved November 07, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GacoqdKjVyE