Snapchat Stories

I'm at my first CONNECT conference this week, in beautiful Niagara Falls!

Typically at conferences, I track some of my learning through Twitter (follow #CanConnectEd this week for some AWESOME learning!). But for this conference, I wanted to try something different.

So I'm trying out Snapchat stories as a way of capturing what I'm seeing and learning. 

Follow along!

Pros

I like that in the end, you get a running chronological story of what you see throughout the day. I like that you can caption images as you go, and though I haven't drawn on the images (or added stickers!), I like the idea of being able to do that quickly, too.

I appreciate the speed at which I can snap a photo, caption it, and get it published. And even though a normal snapchat will disappear soon after it is viewed, posts in Snapchat stories stick around for 24 hours before self-deleting.

Cons

But I don't like that it's not widely interactive - no one can see my stories unless they follow me, and you can't connect with others as easily as you can with a hashtag. And you can only have one story on the go at a time... I went for a hike yesterday and wanted to share some pictures, but didn't want to tack them into the conference story. It would have been nice to be able to make a separate story.

For the long term...

At the end of the day, I can save the entire story to my phone and then export the video. Here are my stories so far!

Note: upon uploading and viewing the videos here on the blog, I realized they are all blurry! Is there a way to fix this? They're not this blurry in the original story... :)

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

End Result?

In the end, I'm not sure that I would use Snapchat stories again to track conference learning. I really liked the speed of snapping and captioning, but I missed the networking and connecting that often comes along with sharing on Twitter or Instagram through a hashtag.

With only a few edu-peeps following me on Snapchat, too, I'm not sure it was worth "sharing" this way, either. It might have been better to just snap pictures right into an app like Evernote.

Why did I try this? We often talk about bringing the learning to where the learners are. With so many students on Snapchat, is it worth considering delivering content to them through this media? Is it feasible to have students document their learning through snaps?

Have you tried Snapchat stories before? Do you have any advice? :) What way of keeping track of what you see at conferences do you prefer? Have you tried using Snapchat with your students?