Day 115 - Vine for the Classroom - Jason Landry, BHS Senior

This post originally appeared on the BHS Help Desk Blog 

Vine for the Classroom:
As I pointed out in my previous post covering Instagram in the classroom, there are many creative ways teachers can use various social media tools to motivate and engage their students. Today’s post covers the tool Vine. Vine is Twitter’s micro-video social network and is known primarily as an entertainment app, but there are also ways to integrate VIne into an educational setting. For example, one way to use Vine in the classroom is if you are in a science class and you are working on a lab, you can record 6 seconds of your procedure to share with the rest of your class and your teacher.  Another way to use Vine in the classroom is for teachers to record themselves saying important facts or information given in the classroom. Teachers can then share Vines with their students through email, Twitter, or Facebook so they can refer back to them when needed.

Creative Vining:Many teachers encourage their students to be creative.  In my English class, for example, I recently had to act out a scene in MacBeth. My class had been told to use creativity and think of an innovative way to act out a scene we had been assigned. After practicing and coming up with how we were going to act this scene out, we then presented our skit to the whole class. Instead of acting the scene out in front of the class, we could have used Vine , and simply recorded the scene and shared it with our classmates and teacher. Not only would this have been a faster way to present, it also would have challenged us to think creatively about our topic and communicate a message in only six seconds.

More Ideas on Using Vine in the Classroom: 

In the article, 20 Ways To Use Twitter’s Vine in Education, by educators Mercer Hall and Patricia Russac, 10 applications and 10 project ideas using Vine are listed. Below is the complete list of their ideas:

Applications:

1. Pair with information on a class website or blog
2. Announce homework to students and parents
3. Model how students should execute a task
4. Market a school’s upcoming events to followers
5. “Tease” new units for kids and families
6. Record student reactions to texts
7. Think-pair-share in a virtual field
8. Grab “preview” or “exit interview” understandings
9. Offer parent testimonials for admissions
10. Build advisory or homeroom unity

Projects:

1. Design mini-book trailers
2. Film solutions to math problems
3. Identify symbols and silent metaphors
4. Recreate drawing or painting methods
5. Document science labs
6. Capture instructions for computer tools
7. Create “real-life” Vokis
8. Animate stop-motion characters
9. Recite famous quotations
10. Impersonate historical figures

Looking for even more creative ways to use tools like Vine and Instagram in the classroom? Find inspiration and real-life examples of teachers from a variety of content areas who are using Vine and Instagram in their classrooms compliments ofEdutopia’s Five-Minute Film Festival.  And if you are not sure if you should use Vine or Instagram, you can compare the two by using this comprehensive comparison chart by Tech Crunch. In terms of real-life applications of Vine, if you teach business, economics, marketing, entrepreneurship or any type of course that covers social media and human relations, consider showing your students how companies such as Urban Outfitters, Dove, Taco Bell, Lowe’s and General Electrichave integrated Vine into their marketing strategy.

So what are your ideas for using Vine in the classroom? We’d love to hear from you! Check out the Vine I made highlighting the BHS Help Desk:

*Remember that Vine should only be used with students age 13 and up.