{"id":273,"date":"2014-03-10T11:31:21","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T11:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/2014\/03\/10\/yik-yak-using-your-students-words-to-teach-them\/"},"modified":"2014-07-13T19:01:43","modified_gmt":"2014-07-13T19:01:43","slug":"yik-yak-using-your-students-words-to-teach-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/2014\/03\/10\/yik-yak-using-your-students-words-to-teach-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Yik Yak & Using Your Students’ Words to Teach Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Yik Yak paddy whack throw a teach a bone.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be awesome if you could see what your students are saying about the community you live in? Well good news friends, there\u2019s an app for that.<\/p>\n

Meet Yik Yak<\/a>. It\u2019s a sort of anonymous twitter. You can post messages anonymously and then people can vote them up or down. But what really makes Yik Yak interesting is that you can only read the messages that were published by someone else near your current location. So for instance, if you open Yik Yak in the student union you\u2019ll see different messages than if you open it at the library.<\/p>\n

It might be easier to think of Yik Yak like a virtual bathroom wall were people scribble messages anonymously. And just like a bathroom wall it\u2019s full of horrible, vile, and down right mean messages sent by people too cowardly to say them publicly. The app has received a lot of criticism<\/a> because it\u2019s been used by school children and college students alike to bully, harass, and shame students and teachers.<\/p>\n

All that said, I think Yik Yak could be used as a pedagogical tool\u2026 if you\u2019re courageous. Often I find myself trying to convince my students that racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. are problems on our campus and in our town[2]<\/a>. Now instead of telling them that intolerance is a problem, I can show them it is. I plan to show them the words of their peers and the community they live in when I talk about racism, sexism, and homophobia. I\u2019ll show them that some of the most oppressive messages receive the most up votes. Yik Yak will serve as an ice breaker and, I hope, neutralize the \u201cwe don\u2019t have that problem around here\u201d argument.<\/p>\n

Why This Might Be a Terrible Idea<\/h3>\n

As soon as my students know that I am on Yik Yak I open the door for them to say the most hurtful things they can anonymously. I trust my students. I sincerely like and respect them as well. I think at this point in the semester we\u2019ve established a strong enough report to do this. But that said, I don\u2019t plan to load Yik Yak after class. I\u2019ll give it a few days for any \u201cProf. Palmer Sucks!!!\u201d messages to fade into the background. If you think your students have animosity toward you or are bigoted toward you because you are from a non-dominant group, you should really consider not using Yik Yak.<\/p>\n

But Wait!<\/h3>\n

Of course Yik Yak messages are an unrepresentative sample. Oh, looky there, another concept that Yik Yak can teach your students. <\/p>\n

\n
\n
    \n
  1. \n

    Sorry, couldn\u2019t help myself.  \u21a9<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    This probably goes without saying, but I would make this same argument in every town and at every school in the United States.  \u21a9<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yik Yak paddy whack throw a teach a bone.[1] Wouldn\u2019t it be awesome if you could see what your students are saying about the community you live in? Well good news friends, there\u2019s an app for that. Meet Yik Yak. It\u2019s a sort of anonymous twitter. You can post messages anonymously and then people can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1982,"featured_media":274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/files\/2014\/03\/Yik-Yak.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1982"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}