Mobile instant messaging for professional learning: Educators' perspectives on and uses of Voxer

Voxer is a messaging tool that allows for voice, text, image, and video communication. To explore Voxer's role in education, we surveyed 240 educators. Heutagogy served as the theoretical framework for the study. Results indicated that participants used Voxer to communicate with educators from diverse roles and from beyond their schools, districts, and regions. Respondents employed Voxer more for professional learning than with students and/or families. The majority of respondents reported that what they learned through Voxer had impacted their practice as educators. We discuss implications of our findings for educators in an era of ubiquitous social media.