On any given day in class a student will take out their phone and “Snap” something. All of my students consume and create steady stream of these messages all day long. When Snapchat first came out I first resisted and then just fell behind. One of the characteristics of the medium, the temporality of the message, made it seem like a potential lewd medium which I didn’t want to model for my students. Now several years later the medium seems to be used mostly for ongoing communication about their day. It is also seemingly too late for me, because according to them I don’t know how to “Snap”.

Snapchat has some elements that make it unique: it can only be accessed by mobile technology, messages are ephemeral (disappear after played for 10 seconds), and it gives image and text equal importance. Bartels (2017) addresses how these characteristics make it a special form of multimodal composition that should be given special consideration given the potential learning involved. The 10 second timeline means that the messenger is forced to think carefully about how to best craft the message, what is the best way to convey the information in that time. Additionally, since the text and image work together the messenger has to think about how to use these for full effect. Finally, the mobile nature means that the messenger must consider what to include of their context - thus the experience I have in my classroom - where students are taking snippets that they find will help their story. The ephemeral nature of the messaging also demands that the author’s think explicitly about audience - one of the oft neglected elements in writing by students.

How Snapchat will translate to the modern workplace is yet to be seen. While Whatsapp and Facebook are now firmly embedded in workplaces, Snapchat belongs mainly to a generation that has not yet started employment. How do we best teach how to use such a tool effectively, or more importantly how do we take the qualities inherent in it and use them to practice communication and literacy skills more generally - intentionally conveying the message that all multimodal forms involve intentional composition and that this can occur in and outside the classroom.

Bartels, J. T. (2017). Snapchat and the sophistication of multimodal composition. English Journal, 106(5), 90.

If you want to get started or improve with Snapchat:

https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-use-snapchat-filters-stories-stickers/

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-snapchat-like-a-pro-according-to-a-millennial-2018-2?IR=T