To selfie or not to selfie? 

                          That’s the crucial question.

"Self-confidence", by Shirley

We’ve been looking for some ways to build the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants, so… What about bringing this new phenomenon into the classroom? Have you ever considered it? To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought about it, since I used to see this kind of photographs as a very superficial way of presenting ourselves. But it wasn’t until I attended a workshop hosted by the English Language Fellow Mathilde Verillaud that I realized how much we can profit by introducing this type of photography in our lessons.

By working with selfies with our students, we can help them realize that it is a very powerful form of communication. A picture speaks by itself, and whenever they portray themselves, they are sending a message to all those who see the photo. If we relate this simple fact, with the communicative function of the language we are teaching, we can see that both can contribute to the same process: sending messages across.

 In this sense, Mathilde showed us an interesting project she carried out in China, some years ago.  She worked with a group of university students and she used selfies as a way of presenting themselves and showing the rest some salient characteristics of their identities. Having learnt some basic notions of photography such as angles and diagonals, this group of students did a very interesting job. You can see some of their works following this link.

"Walking by", by Monica

But how did she relate selfies with the acquisition of the language?  She proposed a number of activities that ranged from writing poems based on the photos to making a gallery walk showing the works. She designed activities covered the four learning skills since, for example, they had to answer higher order ranking questions about the pictures, make oral descriptions, write sentences among others. They used the “selfies” excuse to develop the four skills while using the language to speak about them and getting to know each other. What a wonderful way to learn!

It’s high time we start being permeable to this new kind of phenomenon and let our learners’ creativities and identities becoming the mentors of their learnings!

Sources:

- Verillaud, Mathilde, "Selfies in the Classroom, Really?", presentation at Alicana, Santa Fe, August 2014.

- http://gongdaepc.livejournal.com/tag/self%20portrait