Technology is life… at least to most of today’s students it is. They have grown up knowing technology as a staple in their day for as long as they can remember. This is why it is so important that we incorporate technology into education often in order to meet the students where they are and provide content in a way that they know and enjoy. Many students use or at least check their social media accounts regularly when they have a device in hand. Instagram and Vine are two forms of social media that are incredibly popular among young people. I am old, so I had yet to check these out, but after playing with these accounts, I might even like them better than trusty ole Facebook! I also explored a couple of screencasting programs that prove beneficial in the classroom or library.
After going through the Prezi “Using Instagram in the Classroom”, I realized that their are many ways to use Instagram in the classroom. Whether it be to share an image to serve as a writing prompt or art project, or giving sneak peaks to encourage yearbook sales, Instagram has many possibilities. A librarian create a page to post covers of new books that are in the library, or give book reviews for students. I found the appearance of Instagram to be very simple and clean which is probably one reason that it is appealing to young people. It is very easy to take pictures to share, apply filters to give an artistic effect to your photos, and follow friends, famous people, or companies to see what they are sharing. There is an option to “like” and comment on photos that people post, but my experience with the accounts that I started following showed that there really isn’t as much conversation going on through Instagram as happens on Facebook. People seemed to add a simple caption with their photos, and their may be a few comments, but overall, the threads didn’t tend to be as long. Now, let me apologize ahead of time for the fact that my Instagram and Vine material is quite limited because I am currently home on maternity leave caring for my newborn baby and twin 19 month olds. They dominate my day, so they are my models for this assignment! Here are my Instagram posts:
There is one word that I think perfectly describes Vine: fun! When my cousins started talking about Vine a couple of years ago, I thought it was silly, and couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to do a six second video. After playing with my own account, I began to be overwhelmed with ideas for how Vine could be incorporated in the classroom. What if, as a review activity, groups were assigned a scene from a play they were studying to create a Vine including the key parts of that scene? I can just hear the laughter while learning, which I love! Students could be assigned a vocabulary word to act out the definition for in a Vine. I can’t wait to share ideas with the teachers on my campus and see Vine in action as a learning tool. I found the app very simple to manipulate. After selecting the icon that looks like a camera, you simply hold your finger down to record and let off to stop. This makes it easy to string multiple scenes into one six second video. It is simple to search for people or companies to follow. Here are my Vines:
Screencast-O-Matic is a simple program for creating videos that show what you are doing on your computer screen. You can sign up for a free account, or pay $15 a year for a “Pro” account. With a free account, you can create 15 minute videos of the screen or using a webcam and publish them to Youtube, Screencast-O-matic, or save as a video file. With a “Pro” account, you can create longer videos, and there are options for video editing as well as more options for publishing. When you launch the program, it is easy to navigate. You simply click “record”, and the program gives you a brief countdown to start. Then you just go through the motions of what you want to record and talk through what you are doing. There is a running timer at the bottom of the screen so that you know how much time you have used. Click the pause button if you need to take a break. Selecting the pause button also gives you the option to choose “done” which will then give you the options for uploading your video. The only frustrating thing that I have run into with Screencast-O-matic in the free version is the fact that you cannot edit the video. I have messed up before trying to do a tutorial video, and have had to restart several times. Believe me, when you are doing this late at night, starting over doesn’t always help matters! Overall, I like Screencast-O-matic, and am considering upgrading to a Pro account so that I can save my videos to my Google Drive. Here is my screencast about using Symbaloo:
The other screencasting program that I tried was Jing. It was user friendly, but the free subscription only allowed me to create a five minute video, so I had to do it twice to fit everything in. When you download the program and create an account, as yellow sun icon appears at the top of your screen. If you hover over the sun, you get the options to “capture” or look at your history. A capture will give you options for one of two things. You can either take a screenshot of your screen to share by clicking and dragging over what you would like to capture, or you can do a short video of what you are doing on the screen. Videos are uploaded to your Screencast.com account. Here is my screencast about how to create a ThinkLink:
Ultimately, I like Screencast-O-matic better than Jing because it allows for longer videos to be created with the free account, and multiple ways to save the videos that you make.
Resources:
https://prezi.com/fvbrbbznr7ee/using-instagram-in-the-classroom/
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