Instagram and Vine

Instagram is a photo sharing app that can connect to other social media outlets.  You can snap a picture and instantly share the photo using Instagram.  At first I thought this was an app especially made for celebrities since this is all the rage with the celebrity community.  Why would we use something like this in a school setting?  I thought about that and then had my famous a-ha moment.  I asked administration if we could incorporate Instagram to promote our school's celebration of Mickey Mouse's birthday on November 18th.  This idea was instantly approved and we began posting pictures of Mickey Mouse asking the question:  How old am I today?  This, of course, meant that students would have to visit our library to find out.  Instant success using Instagram...get it?  So clever.

How old am I today? Visit the library to find out!

A photo posted by Melisa Lopez (@mlopez473) on Nov 19, 2015 at 3:29pm PST

Vine is a video sharing app that you can share using social media outlets such as Twitter.  There is a continuous loop effect that is constantly playing.  There is a serious disadvantage to using Vine and that is that it's a very short loop.  It totals 6 seconds and it's hard to say that the full effect can be absorbed in 6 seconds.  It serves as a teaser and everyone knows that curiosity brings in the kids to find out more.  As we continued our celebration for Mickey Mouse's birthday, students were encouraged to enter their guess for Mickey's age.  As students wrote down their guesses, they gave their submission to the librarian and if the age was correct, they were instructed to press play on the library counter computer.  Students were then give a prize for their correct answer.  All the prizes were Mickey Mouse related and students enjoyed the research.




https://vine.co/v/iupm6jnlXdV

You never know with these blog posts, so I included the link as well.


Students were encouraged to wear their favorite Mickey Mouse attire and were given Mickey gifts including folders, pencils, and pencil sharpeners.  Overall, it was a fun day using new picture memories and making kids smile along the way.  Happy Birthday, Mickey!!

Enjoying her new folder for knowing that Mickey Mouse turned 87 on November 18th.

A photo posted by Melisa Lopez (@mlopez473) on Nov 19, 2015 at 4:17pm PST

I think what I enjoyed using most was Instagram.  It was very new to me and as I mentioned before, I'm not a celebrity.  However, we were able to get the word out quickly and we were able to flash the photo throughout the campus using the classroom computers.  We service very low income families, so asking them to create an Instagram account seems a bit out of the norm.  What I thought would be fun to do with Instagram and Vine would be a monthly scavenger hunt and have contests using different graphic ideas through Instagram and Vine.  We would need to use our school computers in order for our students to completely get the idea.