The Snapchat app is very popular, with about 400 million messages received on Snapchat daily.
Today, Time reported that colleges are sending snaps to prospective students, particularly athletes, in part because 77% of college students use Snapchat each day. Because of its widespread usage, I think Snapchat can be effectively used for low-stakes assignments in the college classroom, too.
This recent Buzzfeed post features Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe snapchatting each other, and is the inspiration for a field trip assignment.
Students should be paired, or grouped, and should imagine themselves as personages in dialogue with each other. This can be suitable for many different field trips, but let’s say it’s an Art History field trip to a museum.
One student should choose one artist who has a few works featured in the museum, and the other can choose another artist. These artists do not need to be from the same time period.
Each student will snapchat pieces of the artist’s work and imagine himself to be that artist, and, in the very short character space, he will put in some information about the art piece snapped or the artist’s philosophy. He can also draw with the app.
Below is an imaginary example since I don’t think the Sistine Chapel ceiling will be loaned out any time soon, between one student as Michelangelo and another as Georgia O'Keefe.
