Instructional preparation time right now is more limited than ever before. With the small snippets of time that they have available, local K-12 teachers are urgently seeking out quick and useful suggestions for how to provide engaging learning experiences through online schooling.

Thought of as a “TikTok for Teachers” or “Instagram for Instruction” approach, this project will involve both researching local teachers’ needs and developing an online platform to quickly discover and share ideas for digital pedagogy that work.

The research activities include examining how teachers currently use existing social media platforms, what types of content motivate new ideas for digital pedagogy, and which features within social media environments are most appealing and influential for teachers. The development goal will be to prototype and launch a platform that enables teachers to contribute to and view a montage of short-form examples that center learning goals and show unique digital solutions that can be implemented given the resources that are currently at hand.

This platform will also create opportunities for teachers to discover and better understand research-based digital pedagogies that, when enacted, result in substantive learning experiences in the spirit of maker pedagogy. Effectiveness will be determined through additional user testing and interviews with teachers as well as backend usage data.