My classmate Chloe and I wanted to explore  how to use Tik Tok in the classroom. Tik Tok has become extremely popular with youth and teachers alike, but is it really the best platform to be introduced into the classroom? 

 

Tik Tok has been used by a multitude of teachers and students. Both in their private lives and in the classroom. Student’s are now more than ever in constant contact with their phones, so it is naive to believe that there is no social media use in the classroom. We as teachers can either embrace this fact or fight it. A lot of teachers and admin have chosen to embrace social media in their classrooms and find it a rather useful tool to engage their students and increase multimodal learning. We have found that TikTok is used for a wide breadth of topics within a classroom. 

TikTok can be used in a myriad of classroom situations. TikTok can be used for engaging and effective modules on a flipped classroom layout (2). This method is effective because it allows students access to a short video of the most important points without the distractions of the extra content that normally comes with notes, overall lowering the cognitive load (2, 3). Thus allowing students to retain more through this approach than with the traditional lecture style (2).  In addition, TikTok can be used to create excitement in a subject area considered boring by students. One teacher did just this with the Missouri compromise of 1820 (1). The idea came to this teacher when he saw students using TikTok in the hallways (1). This is an example of how educators are embracing the use of social media in the classroom rather than combating it. Beyond use in the classroom, some teachers are using TikTok to make videos with tips and tricks, like how to cite an essay (1). 

TikTok is being used by educators, but does it add to their understanding or distract them? There is definitely the risk of TikTok becoming a classroom distraction, however, it also provides a multitude of pedagogical affordances (1, 3). These affordances include: realistic experience, motivation, student control and review, and the ability to engage students as creators (3). In addition, the format of TikTok fits the principles of Richard Mayer’s Multimedia Principles (3). Mayer’s Principles state that educational content should be short, succinct, include visuals and audio, and contain one or two key areas of focus (3). Thus when educators are creating content or looking for content to use in the classroom they need to consider both Mayer’s Principles and the cognitive load it will put on the students (3).

Some people see TikTok as a safe place for conversations and others think it may be the perfect recipe for cyber bullying. The BBC wrote that TikTok is seen as a safe and inviting place for young people to discuss difficult topics that interest them (4). Some examples of these topics are: black history, LGBTQ stories, and women’s history (4). However, TikTok contains a duet function, which can be used to support others but also has the potential to be a target of bullying (1). In addition, teachers themselves aren’t immune to being secretly recorded and ridiculed online (1). 

Another question this topic brings up is that of student privacy and safety while on TikTok. The privacy concerns have become ubiquitous across the entire TikTok platform (1). One study demonstrates that TikTok follows the permissions as they are assigned in the user’s phone settings (8). However, they suggest that TikTok should begin encrypting their videos from end to end to increase privacy and safety (8). Another concern is of the emerging technology, not the application itself – new technology is making facial recognition and deepfake technology more present (8). With this technology becoming mainstream the more videos of someone’s face there are the easier it is to create a fake video of them (8). This information gives educators good reason to approach this application cautiously when implementing it in a classroom (1, 8).

Although there are liabilities to consider when using Tiktok, there are also opportunities that TikTok has created for students and educators. These resources and opportunities have been created for TikTok to try and remove the negative connotations that have come along with their chinese affiliation (5). One such example is through the use of will known celebrities like Bill Nye and Lily Sighn (5). In addition, TikTok launched a hashtag: #Edutok; this was launched as an initiative to democratize learning in indian digital learning (6). This hashtag fostered collaboration and co-creation as well as provided an accessible way for people to learn who may not have access to the information otherwise (6). Beyond these examples, TikTok also stepped in to create a 50 million dollar “creative learning fund” to make grants to professionals, educators, and nonprofits that were affected by the pandemic (5). The grant encouraged people to create educational videos on the platform (5). These had many topics such as: exercise routines, sleep tips, information on how to make a floral arrangement, and even biological lessons (5). Although TikTok has a negative connotation their steps to making improvements are worth note.

We reached out to a PE teacher over Twitter who uses TikTok for mindfulness and wellbeing. She began using TikTok to present out of the timetable ‘challenges’ to her students, and encouraged them to share it with their families. She used TikTok as the medium to record her videos but posted them directly to her Microsoft 365 classroom, by doing this she was ensuring there were no privacy issues with the students needing to download and make accounts on TikTok. The PE teacher admitted that screening songs for use in her challenges was time consuming; even if the 15-30 second clip didn’t have inappropriate language she would still need to screen the entire song to ensure she wasn’t encouraging the consumption of inappropriate songs.

Through Twitter we were also able to initiate a conversation with a school admin. He began using TikTok at the beginning of the worldwide pandemic to continue to share the school when there were no students there. He was willing to give us his individual opinion on the use of TikTok. He believes students need to be taught how to use all social media, not just TikTok, in constructive ways. He uses his account to model fun ways to help with learning and connect with students. IN connecting with students, he finds that it is helping to rub off in a relevant way for the kids. He also acknowledges the shortcomings of TikTok. First, he has a strict policy on ‘following’, students know that they can’t follow him or else he will block their accounts. He mentions that he lives in a small community where trust is already built in thus he hasn’t been put in a sticky spot with TikTok and students. Overall, the PE teacher and admin have a positive outlook on TikTok as long as it is used with safety and students in mind.    

We also reached out on a Facebook Teachers Group and this is what they had to say:

 

There are many great things about Tik Tok as seen above but there are some pitfalls too. Part of our inquiry started to move towards what can we do to improve Tik Tok and how can we create an education only version. We distilled our ideas into the graphic below.

Click me for clearer text 🙂

In exploring this topic we set out to teach ourselves something through Tik Tok. We thought that we needed the hands on experience in order to get the full picture of the app. Ally decided to teach herself a viral dance set to Abba’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight). She tried to teach herself by just watching other people dancing and quickly realized that she needed a little more guidance. She found a youtube video that broke the dance down step by step with a lot of repetition and guidance.

 This video was 11 minutes long and made in a traditional style for dance teachers. After watching the video she had a bit more confidence in her moves and was able to go back to Tik Tok and follow along more easily. There were some short instructional videos on the dance that now made a lot more sense after watching the extended video. She found that the short Tik Tok videos were great to get a lot of information in a short amount of time but were only really effective once she had the basic lesson down. In short, she realized that you can definitely learn from Tik Tok but not without previous scaffolding. 

But…one thing Ally did not account for was how shy she would be in recording herself doing this dance. She found out the hard way that Tik Tok takes a lot of confidence. It was hard for her to record herself and be happy with the result. This is a very real barrier to using this platform. You have to not care. So instead of a serious dance video Ally decided to make fun of herself a bit (easier for her to do) and create a blooper reel instead. 

 

 

‘Tis the season for baking which influenced Chloe’s decision to try and learn how to make mini apple tarts. While perusing TikTok she noticed a lot of videos contained the recipes for the filling of the tarts but very few contained the instructions on how to make the tart shells. This prompted her to find another video for making tart pastry – she was successful. However, the TikTok videos that included measurements were in languages that Chloe doesn’t know. With this in mind Chloe attempted to create the tart shells using only the video (she also purchased premade tart shells in case her pastry was unpalatable). While baking Chloe found it hard to eyeball the measurements thus she searched for a full recipe to guide her. After reading the recipe she felt like she had a better understanding of how much she was supposed to add. However, without the video she felt she may not have understood the directions in the recipe. Overall, this experience made her realize that TikTok can be a great tool to use if it is complemented by another medium. For example: a longer tutorial video can work to supplement what TikTok has left out, or perhaps a written description of instructions can fill in the holes that a 20 second video may miss.

Chloe managed to figure out TikTok enough to post her own videos of creating her pie, however, she doesn’t know how to make the video longer than 15 seconds. This caused her to need to make three 15 second videos. If you take a look at this one it will link you to the rest through her profile:http://https://bit.ly/36VTpzf

 

Throughout this inquiry we saw some really positive aspects of Tik Tok and social media use in general in the classroom, but we also learned of some potential drawbacks. Overall, we think that it can be a useful and exciting tool to engage with students in a novel way. We think, though, that if we were able to adapt the app into a more school-based system most of the negative drawbacks would disappear.