Vine Kids

Vine hit the scene a few years back as a different way to shoot and share videos as six-second clips that loop or repeat. I played with it, shot silly things like a tired me landing at Logan at 3 am, and maybe too enthusiastically smashing a toilet that had sat in my garage for a year. I stuck with Facebook.

Vine Kids (Free, be sure to change the App Store search from iPad only to iPhone, as this is an iPhone app that will run on iPad) on the other hand, is a simple and limited app that gives you access to kid-friendly Vines, the looping videos that the site trades on. Kid-friendly subgenres include silly animations, animals and kids doing funny things, or even quick clips featuring kid-recognizable characters such as Grover or the Minions.

The app does not let you search, which I wish it did, but the repeating nature of the short videos makes it suited to a quick language activity-- you know, the kind where your students think they are getting a reward but actually are practicing skills? A good warm-up or wrap-up! Take a look at the videos themselves and see what is unstated, which is of course the kind of information that you can scaffold your students to state: story grammar elements such as character and setting, and description of these, verbs, situational aspects such as prediction of what came before and after the snippet, discussion of perspective, feelings, and who must have shot the video.

Above: Hampsters eating salad! To get started with Vine Kids, just tap the screen and swipe right and left to navigate through the available videos.

Also consider using Vine itself as a follow up, as it has some educational applications. Vine is public, like Twitter, so you wouldn't want to include kids in your videos. BUT it is easy to use and could be used to shoot quick language-based videos such as:
-how-tos- steps in a task
-items in a category
-a play script (e.g. your Fisher-Price mailman picking up the mail from the Little People town mailbox and delivering it.

DO NOT use Vine Kids if you are put off by a fart noise or even bird poop, or with kids who cannot come back from such a thing to be productive or regulated. I also could do without these videos being included but they are thankfully only occasional!

Have you ever used Vine in your work? Share a link in the comments!