Remote Programming on Instagram

Type: Active
Age: Middle school
Optimal size: 20+
Estimated cost: $26 - $50
Planning time: <2 hours
Frequency: Daily

Learning outcomes

● Think flexibly

● Engage in personal expression

● Demonstrate technology use that is safe, ethical and responsible

● Leverage digital tools to broaden their perspective

● Build and manage their online identity

● Manage personal information to protect privacy and security

● Express themselves on a variety of platforms

Instructions

FYI, we use Linktree for all our links. Linktree allows you to compile a list of links in one spot. 

Nailed It-Nail Edition-You can do all types of themes for this game-baking, nail designs, make up, fashion, famous

paintings, hairstyles, etc. 

The most obvious way to run this program is to show a picture of what teen need to "nail" in your story or feed and

ask teens to try to Nail It and take a picture. However, my teens do NOT do this. I will have the same teen fully participate and do the project and take pics. About 50 teens will look at the story, but they won't participate. But we need attendance and engagement, what do we do? Rather than ask my teens to do the activity, I did it and had them vote.

• I chose ten nail designs and put a poll in the instastory about three days before the actual program.
• I did the five designs they voted for and took after pictures.
• I then asked them if I "nailed it."
• I gave them the option to try to nail the same designs. 
• We had 20 participants (teens who voted in both polls)

We do many poll type programs like this where we ask teens to vote on what their library workers should do. We've had them vote on who drew their bedroom the best, where they would like to travel (it was for a virtual travel program), we did a tournament style game where they voted for best snack food.

Our most popular poll style program was dream prom. As I stated, our teens won't postpics of themselves in their

prom outfits so we had them vote on their dream prom. I posted several dresses/suits, make up looks, hair styles, shoe styles, transportation, date, and after party options. Teens then voted on their dream prom; we had about 25 teens took the polls. If you do something like this, be aware that you will have LGBTQ+ teens so don't assume that all the girls will want to wear a dress or bring a boy to their prom.  Give different of options.

Divination Week-We also used the poll feature but we added video and photography interaction.

• Tarot-I had to do research on how to do Tarot. I watched Youtube videos as well as library books. I purchased a Kawaii tarot card set from Books A Million. 
• Using the poll feature, I had teens who wanted a reading choose a one card reading which would tell them what to focus on today. Or a three card reading which would tell them what to start, stop, and continue. 
• Before I filmed, I pulled the cards and wrote down my script.
• When I filmed, I pulled the cards for them to seeandIsaidtheteen's name.
  • Keep in mind, Instagram videos cannot be longer than 1 minute so talk fast.
• Palm Reading
  • We asked teens to send us a picture of their hand.
  • My coworker researched palm reading and gave them readings.

Divination Week also included tea leaf reading, ancient runes and numerology. All three used the poll feature. The entire week was very successful with about 22 teens. This is more than we would get in an in house program.

Scratch Tutorial-We used the poll feature to ask teens what kind of game they wanted our teen library worker to create. My coworker used their feedback to make a how-to-use Scratch tutorial; it was uploaded to our Youtube channel.  We also put the scratch tutorial in our Linktree for easy access.

Reader's Advisory Games-There are all types of ways you can do reader's advisory on Instagram, just change the theme. We've done astrology where we give a book rec based on their sign, we've recommended books based on their favorite color, TV show, and movie but our most popular was when we had them take a sorting quiz.

• We used the poll option and I asked them to "choose one" without any explanation.Iusedemoji's as options.
  
  Their options were:
  •  Drop of Blood or a Cloud-blood was a red book cover and the cloud was a white book cover.
  • A beach wave or sunglasses-wave was a blue book cover and sunglasses was a black book cover
  • A crown or alien-crown was fantasy and alien was science fiction
  • A sword or tear drop-sword was adventure and tear drop was sad book.
  • Sun or moon-sun was a light tone and moon was a dark tone
  • A ghost or rainbow-horror or LGBTQ+
  • A baby or stopwatch-baby was a new release and stopwatch was an old release. 
  • Pithy or Elongate-short or long book
• Once they did the survey, I chose books from our ebooks that were available for check out. 
• I tagged them in my response and directed them to a link to access our ebooks.

Quarantine Playlist-We used the question box to ask teens to tell us what they are listening to during the quarantine. We compiled the list and made a playlist on Youtube. We directed them to a link to see the playlist. 

Complete the Story-We used the question box for teens to write a story one line at a time.

Evaluation

• Virtual programming is just like in-house programming-it can be difficult to get participation. Use the same strategies you use for in-house. 
  • You have to see how your teens are using IG. Simply adapt. 
• Use your talents to create a program. If you can draw, teach a drawing how-to; if you can bake, teach a how-to-baking class. The only thing I can do is graffiti letters so I made a how-to-draw graffiti letters video and uploaded it to our Youtube channel.  I will also take requests; teens can tell me what to draw and I will draw it in Adobe Illustrator. I'll then send it to them digitally through IG or email.