5 Vine Tips For Teachers


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shutterstock_357883529 CHIANGMAI,THAILAND - January 3, 2016: Vine app on smart phone with a cup of coffee on wooden background. Vine is a short-form video sharing service. Founded in June 2012

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Ross Morrison McGill founded @TeacherToolkit in 2010, and today, he is one of the 'most followed educators'on social media in the world. In 2015, he was nominated as one of the '500 Most Influential People in Britain' by The Sunday Times as a result of...
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How can teachers use Vine to engage their followers?

Publication note: I wrote this in May 2016 prior to Twitter’s announcement to axe Vine in October 2016.

Many educators are using social media to connect and share content. But, have you considered using social media in a different format? In this post I share 5 Vine Tips For Teachers and provide the reader with some ideas and the things I’ve learnt along the way.

Vine – founded in October 2012 – is a short-form video sharing service where users can share six-second-long looping video clips.  Each user can share videos which are published through Vine’s social network and can be shared on other services such as Facebook and Twitter. (Wikipedia)

I started using Vine in November 2015 and for the past 6 months, I’ve used it to record some of my working life as a teacher. I’ve shared video content in blogs to communicate ideas better; to share what is actually happening in the room at conferences and at training events.

Today, I’m fast approaching 1 million loops (views)! and this six-second video style defines the application and gives social-media users an alternative way to share content.

Profile:

At present, I have over 60+ Vine videos:

@TeacherToolkit on Vine Video Loops

Click to visit my Vine profile.

Setting Up:

Learning how to use Vine is simple. So, how can you get started?

Vine is available as a free download on all three major smart-phone platforms, including Android, iOS and Windows.

After installation, you’ll be prompted to sign up with either your Twitter account or email address. Add your own contacts and follow a few recommended people to find content that is interesting.

Once you’ve added Twitter friends and popular channel users, pay attention to their revines. Like a retweet, a revine makes it possible to share a video created by another user to all of your followers. Many popular users make cameos in each other’s Vine videos and revine each other frequently. You can also scroll through talented users’ “following” list, to see who they’re watching. (Mashable)

How Does It Work?

Vine enables users to record short video clips up to around six seconds long while recording through its in-app camera. The essence of sharing in this way, is that you get six seconds of video recording to play with as you will. To start the camera rolling, you press and hold your finger on the screen of your device. When you lift your finger off, Vine stops recording video.

Additional features include grid and ghost image tools for the camera and the ability to “revine” videos on a personal stream, and protected posts. Recently, Vine updated their app with a new “loop count” meaning every time someone watches a vine, a number on top of the video will appear showing how many times it was viewed.

There are some handy tips on the Vine website.

shutterstock_278683019 CHIANGMAI, THAILAND -MAY 17, 2015:Apple iphone 6 displaying Vine application. Vine is a short-form video sharing service. Founded in June 2012

Image: Shutterstock

5 Teacher Tips:

So, how can teachers use Vine in the same way to share the work they are doing? Here are 5 videos that are in-line with my best eSafety advice. They are not necessarily my greatest Vine videos …

1. Safeguarding:

First and foremost, if you are sharing images of your school and/or students, make sure you have permission to do so. If not, then ensure any footage you have does not include images of students. This is a good example.

 

 

2. Express yourself!

Capture the life of your school, your work and share the work of other colleagues. Below is a great range of images from our art exhibition last week. Again, no student images, only text and a range of work.

 

 

3. Day-to-day life.

Use Vine to capture the day-to-day life of your work. This could be something simple as objects found on your desk or some of the documentation you are working on. Below is my most popular Vine to-date with over 100,000 loops.

 

 

4. An extension of …

Sometimes I use Vine videos to be an extension of blogposts. This is something I tend to write-up in an edu-sketch note after I have written a blog. Here is an example blog, Education Research for Beginners with the supporting Vine video below.

 

 

5. Keep it simple.

It is useful to keep in mind what you want to record. There is often a desire to capture everything in a short 6-seconds. My advice, keep videos simple with not too many edits and scenes. In terms of clips, the example below is what I would say is just about right. Anything more and the number of scenes loses emphasis on the message you wish to portray. Music also adds to the effect …

 

In all of your videos, you can add music content to replace any recorded audio.

What Works?

Finally, from the small number of videos I have created, here are a list of good and (then) bad samples.

  1. Capturing live events is a great way to share with your followers.
  2. Working in schools, sharing how things are achieved and the process behind it.
  3. Capturing the national agenda at VIP events helps keep others in the loop.
  4. Work in the classroom with students is a great way to showcase classroom practise.
  5. Daily routines, such as the drive to work or playing football with staff after work.

and not so good examples:

  1. Never post any content after a beverage(!), especially after a TeachMeet when you’ve had one or two drinks.
  2. Vines targeted to just one person? This limits the maximum audience.
  3. Trying to replicate popular (past) Vine videos. Far too many scenes in this footage …
  4. Video selfies designed to publicise events or products. The longevity is short-lived in this style of video.
  5. Recording yourself from past video footage (off the telly!) from YouTube. The sound quality is lost!

Why not give Vine a go and share your footage with others?

TT.

@TeacherToolkit logo new book Vitruvian man TT

 


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