Whoo-oo-oo! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present, come to alarm all you teaching folk with a vision of horror!  Your students – all of them – have a new app, Yik Yak. It’s like Twitter, but it is anonymous. They can write whatever they like and no one will know. They can moan, swear, bully, use bad grammar…SHUDDER.

It’s not open to the whole world. Worse!  It is geographically bound, so you can only pick up ‘Yaks’ (messages) from with a  1.5 mile radius. That’s your campus, your lecture theatre. That means everything is about you. Intense, huh?  You can feel the wave of panic in the Executive suites. It must be stamped out!

Hang on a minute!  I am the Ghost of Christmas Future and I say DON’T PANIC!  Surely we can find a use for this? How might it help us with Learning and Teaching? It could give us insights into how our students learn, and alert us to NSS issues early? We could use up-voting and down-voting to develop critical analysis. We could even join them and be part of the community. Want to know more, well I bring you this lovely piece by Eric Stoller:

https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/yik-yak-the-rise-of-anonymous-geo-social-connectivity-20-may-2015

I think he just saved Christmas!

This post was one of our advent learning and teaching treats. To explore all the other treats click here.