Instagram is a photo app that has become very popular among today's youth. They are posting pictures of themselves, their friends, what they are eating, or whatever highlights their day. Vine is a 6 minute video app that is gaining popularity, too. It is associated by the people from Twitter. Together, these two apps can be used in the classroom as classroom projects or supplement to classroom instruction.
Instagram turned out be an easy app to use. You just take a picture, click a button and you posted it to your Instagram stream. You are able to follow people, and people are able to follow you. I liked that you are able to crop the picture and change its hues, but that is about all you can do with the picture. I think it is a great way to share photos with friends and family.
In the photo below, the owners of the fields in front of our house were burning the sugarcane that was ready for harvesting. It was such a loud, smelly, and scary event. I decided to document it. What I did I changed the hue of the picture, and it made it look as if the trees in our front yard looked burnt. It also made the fire be the center of this picture. This is just the small bit Instagram can do.
In order for me to place writing in my pictures or other designs, I had to download other apps. The apps that I found were from the Google Store. Below is a picture of my niece, Bunny. What I did was download an app used with Instagram called Instext. As you can see, it allowed me to put a frame around her picture. Instext had a variety to choose from. Then I decided to write her name on her picture. They had a nice choice of fonts also. What I also liked was that you could add stickies to the picture as well. I think this livens up the picture.
In this next picture, I took a picture of the book I am currently reading with my students in the class. I was surprised by a student who commissioned a carving of one of the characters of the story, Ranger. He gave it to me! I decided to showcase the gift on Instagram. I also believe that it can be use as a promotion for the book. I used Instext to create a border and to add the word Ranger next to the figurine. Instext is not become part of Instagram. It is a separate app, but you can share your modified photos on Instagram. With Instagram, you can not add text or stickies to the picture.
Another app that can be used in conjunction with Instagram is InstaCartoon. When you take a picture with InstaCartoon you are able to change the photo in a variety of ways. You can turn you picture into a cartoon, sketch, comic, and many other ways. When you are done changing the photo, you can save it and share it on Instagram. Below, I took a picture of my cat. Then, I chose the option Sketch on InstaCartoon. The only thing that I did not like about InstaCartoon is that it has a delay when taking picture. I was unable to take a decent picture of the cat because by the time the picture was taken, he would move away and the moment would be lost. Other than that, I liked this app.
Instagram can have many uses in the classroom. In a blog, 10 Ways to Use Instagram, many ideas are given on how to use Instagram in the classroom. One way to use it is to showcase student's work. Below, you can see a picture that my son took of his work-in-progress for his art class. He usually documents various stages of his drawings. The same can be done for pictures of students in the class. I also liked the idea that was given of posting the student of the month. In a prezi presentation, more ideas are given on how Instagram can be used in the classroom. I really liked the idea of using a picture for a writing prompt. In the annual Texas STAAR test, the students are sometimes shown pictures to help them bring out their background knowledge. This idea would be great to get them prepared for that test.
Vine is an app that allows you to take short videos up to six seconds long. These videos then loop, so they are repeating themselves over and over if you have them on the screen. I really liked this idea. Recording the videos was easy (after I asked a student to show me how to record on vine). All I had to do was shoot and touch the screen. I could stop it and start it right from where I left it the last time I used it. Below, I caught my husband, Manuel, adding some kind of chemical to the weeds in the lawn. For the recording, I asked him to state what he was doing and what chemical he was using. Also, I recorded my mother-in-law working on her crochet materials. In the classroom, I can have the students promote a book they are using and post it on vine. The students can record themselves saying a few lines of the book they reading or provide a video showing tangible items that are related to the book.
One of the best features of vine is that you are able to stop your recording and resume with the touch of the screen. Below, I recorded my cat asking to be let outside. I recorded him in various stages. I can see my students making very creative recordings with this ability. I could have them choose their favorite quote from the book and act it out in the six minutes time. It would be a quick project they can have fun sharing with the class, and at the same time, it would get them to read their book.
I think Instagram and Vine are great tools that can be used in the classroom. Both can be used to document on-going projects. They can be used to promote books that the students have read or even post the student of the month or highest points in reading. The only problem using these public apps, especially Vine, is that you could find unwanted items in your stream. A suggestion that was made in a blog, 8 Ways You Can Use Vine to Teach Reading Comprehension, that if the classroom teacher decides to use Instagram or Vine, that they create one account for the class and make it private so that no one else besides the teacher, students, and parents have access to the postings. I believe in doing this the students will enjoy themselves creating projects on both apps and motivate to do the reading and research so that they can have a creative project to show their peers.
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