I've talked about several different social media apps over the course of this blog, but I've got two more that I think you'll enjoy using personally and in the classroom. They are Instagram and Vine. Instagram is primarily for pictures while Vine is for short looping videos.
I've used Instagram for over a year, but it took me a while to post regularly to it. I am a fairly private person, so sharing little bits of my life with the world is not on the fore front of my mind. My primary reason for getting an Instagram was so I could keep in contact with a friend of mine who doesn't have Facebook. Once I got into the habit of taking pictures, it became easier to share them. I also set my account to private, so only the people who I have approved can view my pictures. I have temporarily set my account to public so you can view my pictures.
The first thing you will need to do is download the Instagram app for your phone and create an account. You can either set yours to private or public. If you are going to have student work on your Instagram, then you might want to set your account to private so only your students/parents can see it. There are a few ways you can upload pictures to you Instagram. The first way is to simply take a photo using the camera on your phone, and then upload it to Instagram. You can filter the image, add a caption, tag people, and then upload it to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Flicker. Here's a picture of my dog Goofy that I uploaded using this method.
After a view posts, I realized I could take a picture while in the app and post it. This is pretty useful since you are going to open the app anyway to post the picture.
I mentioned that Instagram is a digital scrapbook, but you'll notice that my pic here doesn't have a cool frame to give it that "scrapbook" feel. This is where a companion app comes in handy! I use LiPix (formerly Insaframe) to add text, frames, or to upload multiple pictures at once.
There are other apps you can download, but some come with a cost. I like using a companion app so I can filter the images and give them a special touch. Most of my recent pictures are of my knitting projects. I am teaching myself how to knit, so I post the pictures to show my knitter friends my progress.
How can you use this in your classroom or library? You can post pictures of student projects, field trips, athletic events, concerts, or participating in classroom activities. If you're wanting to get them in on the posting action, you could have them temporarily change their handles to a historic figure or literary character's name. Have them post pictures as if they are the person or character. The pictures could be true to the time period the person or character lived in, or they could be the person's or character's reaction to living in today's world.
Another way to use Instagram is to have your students run a campaign. Divide the class into two-four groups, have them decide who is going to be the candidate and who will be campaign workers, and let them experience some of the aspects of campaigning for office. This assignment can be limited to Instagram, or you can expand the assignment to other social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or any media site you feel comfortable using. The more platforms you have your students use, the more sites you have to monitor. A project like this would need parent permission as you are requiring their children to get on social media. If a student does not have permission to have their own social media accounts, you might see if it is ok for them to help create posts for others to post to their accounts. These students could also be in charge of creating posters, buttons, and other campaign swag.
Vine: Looping Videos
Looping videos are not videos of loops, but videos that automatically start over thus they are on a continuous loop! Your video can be done in one take, or as many as you want. All you do is point the camera on your phone at what you want to record and shoot. That's it. You then share them with the public. You can add categories such as comedy, food, travel, etc. I've linked my Facebook and Twitter accounts to Vine, so I can upload the video to them when I share the video on Vine. As with Instagram, there are companion apps you can download to get a bit more creative with your videos.
Some ideas on how to use it in the classroom would be reenactments, contests, book trailers and advertisements.
For reenactments, you could assign students, or groups, an even or scene from a novel/play for them to reenact and have them post their reenactment to vine. Then have the other students try to guess what event or scene is being reenacted.
To use Vine for book trailers, you can have students pick their favorite books and quickly tell why others should read it. You could also use Vine for an alternative to written book reports.
As for advertisements, you could use them to remind students of upcoming due dates, events, or test. You could also have students create ads for the events and share them with their friends.
Another idea would be to show what you are doing in your classroom. I like John Schu's and Colby Sharp's videos because they are doing fabulous things with their students!
If you have any other ideas, please share them in the comments!
Brittany
