At Educatech Expo, held at Paris Porte de Versailles from November 13 to 15, 2024, we encountered several « gems » that we want to share with you through short videos and articles. We hope they will serve as a source of inspiration for your ongoing and future projects.
Interview 🎙️Today, we want to inspire you with Julien Crémoux, a primary school teacher, active member, and representative of the SCOllectif association. He explains how all the initiatives developed by SCOllectif over the past years have successfully migrated to the Mastodon social network.
« Most remote class exchange initiatives started on Twitter, such as Twictée, for example, which was among the first. Twitter’s evolution and lack of moderation led us to reconsider its use, especially since we must also comply with GDPR regulations, » he explains.
About two years ago, SCOllectif decided to migrate all its initiatives simultaneously to a Mastodon instance. « This way, we own this instance, meaning we own the data, and we can moderate account creation, usually limiting it to classrooms, » he clarifies.
With Mastodon, We Manage and Safeguard Our Data!
The association can encourage classes to delete unnecessary or old posts and assist in publishing content.
Raising Students’ Awareness of Digital Identity
« Through this free social network, the goal is to make students responsible for their rights and duties, to help them understand what a social network is, and to enable meaningful exchanges between classes, » says Julien Crémoux.
Collaboration and Interaction: The True Purpose of Using a Social Network
He emphasizes that these initiatives are meant for collaboration and exchanges, not just for self-expression or for classmates, « but to be read, to have other students react and interact with us. »
Even though Mastodon allows for more characters than Twitter, the limitation encourages students to reflect on what they want to express and to work on conciseness. « This really represents the culmination of classroom work. »
The five minutes an individual student spends posting on Mastodon actually reflect two to three hours of collective class work.
Being read by other classes significantly motivates students—they take greater care in their writing because they anticipate reactions.
On Twitter, around 500 classes participated in the different initiatives. Over the past year, about 300 to 500 classes have been posting regularly. « So in terms of numbers, we haven’t lost anything. » Some initiatives have seen fewer participants, while others have grown, but communication and word-of-mouth play a significant role in these dynamics. Gradually, each initiative is regaining participants.
« Clearly, things have restarted—but differently, and better, I’d say. We now operate within a framework we control. Instead of passively accepting something, we think it through, » he concludes.
The Mastodon instance is a truly educational tool for class interactions and goes beyond merely being a pedagogical monitoring platform.
More information:
Discover the initiatives supported by the SCOllectif association: scollectif.fr
