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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.
Students are already on social media outlets! Use them!There is a competition going on for everyone’s attention. Teachers often lose the battle for their students’ attention because they refuse to compete in the arena of new media. Modernize. Engage students where they already spend so much of their time.
You’d think by now that most teachers could see the value of creating social media accounts for the purpose of interacting with their students, but so few seem to take advantage of the opportunity.
Look at it this way: Any social media account (whether YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter) is like having your own TV channel. Students can “tune in” whenever they want. Americans spend a huge percentage of their internet time browsing social media websites. By creating your own social media outlets, you can capture students’ attention and get them thinking about learning when they least expect it. The more time they spend outside of class considering associated topics, the more likely they are to perform well in class.
“Never underestimate the value of a smiling face…”Believe it or not, students often find it cool when teachers interact with them on social media websites. It can reduce any sense of authoritarianism in teacher-student relationships and cultivate feelings of familiarity and amiability. Even if you don’t want to directly “friend” students with your personal Facebook account, you can still create an account purely for professional reasons. You can even create a Facebook “page” or Twitter account just for the sake of blasting out education-related messages or short lessons.
If nothing else, you can share semi-relevant, humorous, and entertaining content that will keep students in good spirits, which in itself helps with engagement. By going as far as making a YouTube account and posting videologs, you can begin to interact with your students on a more “real,” personalized basis. Never underestimate the value of a smiling face looking directly into a camera.
With the new media of smartphones and tablets spilling over into the classroom, it’s time that teachers allow their content to overflow into the media of the home (not just through homework). By creating valuable, interesting content and posting it on venues students are already using, teachers shift to the new paradigm of communication. Engage students in settings where they naturally gravitate: engage them on social media outlets.
Still hungry for ideas on how to engage digital natives? Our professional development course: Technology Driven Classrooms (TDC) is designed specifically for you. TDC provides educators with essential teaching techniques, ideas, and suggestions for educating and inspiring today’s students.
Remember to come back next week for a new tip on engaging digital natives! And if you didn’t catch it, have a gander at last week’s post on the power of “Prezi!”
