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“What can you say in six seconds?”

Imagine if you had a message that everyone needed to hear, but you only had six second to say it. How would you get it across? How would your communication skills be tested? How would your creativity be stretched? How would you engage and inform?

Vine, a new app from the makers of Twitter, forces users to answer these questions. Vine is a micro-video application. Vine allows the creation and sharing of any six-second video users can think of.   While this paradigm lends itself to a variety of comedic stunts, it holds huge potential in the realm of education.

Throughout our schooling, we’re taught the value of concision. To impress, say more with less. Services like Vine and Twitter put this principle to the test. What valuable information could students and educators possibly say in six seconds or less?

• For English and writing contexts, flash fiction will always challenge students to convey potentially deep and complex narratives in as few words as possible. Translated into Vine video, these stories gain the human element that often only comes with live readings.
• Vine can be used to demonstrate any procedure that doesn’t require a lot of extra explanation. The virtue of video is that visuals can convey a lot more than written step-by-step directions. This can make explaining cumbersome procedures tidy and quick.
• A large number of science teachers and parents already share fun and exciting experiments on Vine to demonstrate basic scientific principles. These sorts of experiments tend to be easily duplicated and expanded into a larger lesson.
• Vine can also be used to provide clever and entertaining refreshers on commonly-used equations and formulas.  Vine videos are great for simple math problems, grammar rules, or any rules of thumb that you want to engrain in your students.
• For any short message (due dates, schedule changes, reminders) you want to blast out to parents and students over social media, Vine is a great tool.

If you’re looking for more great tips on how to use mobile technology to engage your students, have a look at our very own signature course, Technology Driven Classrooms (TDC). TDC is bursting with unique ideas and strategies that will keep your students looking forward to learning.

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