I have really started looking at Vine as a social media platform, and have been really interested in how it is being used. Over the Christmas holidays, I could easily get lost in going through the posts of others and seeing what they have shared, and an hour could disappear in seemingly seconds.
If you don’t know what Vine is, here is the summary from Wikipedia:
Vine is a short-form video sharing service. Founded in June 2012, it was acquired by microblogging website Twitter in October 2012, just before its official launch. The service allows users to record and edit five- to six-second-long looping video clips, and to “revine”, or share others’ posts with followers. Some Vines are revined automatically based on what is popular. The videos can then be published through Vine’s social network and shared on other services such as Facebook and Twitter. Vine’s app can also be used to browse through videos posted by other users, along with groups of videos by theme, and trending, or popular, videos.
When I first heard of the platform, I didn’t think it would ever catch on. I mean really, what could you do with only 6 seconds in a video? But quickly, it has become one of the largest platforms for sharing videos, and there are many people (many of them in their teens), who have acquired millions of followers from their highly entertaining videos that they have shared. Like any social media platform, not all content shared is something that I would be interested in, or even appropriate, but there is a lot of really interesting things being shared through the service.
This one made me really laugh, combining a “viral video” from the past to today’s popular music:
As I look deeper into the idea of “innovation”, especially as it relates to schools, there are some lessons I have noticed from the use of Vine.
1. Innovation can still happen with constraints. As mentioned earlier, there was not much I thought that could be done with a 6 second video, but people are making some pretty amazing videos. Check out the following time lapse of the Northern Lights:
Or this one of a simple leaf:
Instead of focusing on what people “don’t” have in the use of Vine, they focus on what they do have, and many, try to create something amazing within the system. There are many people that would love to totally start school from scratch, and sometimes I agree, but the reality of our world is that this is not likely to happen, and we are going to look at what he have to not always think “outside of the box”, but figure out how to be innovative inside of it.
2. Multiple ideas can often lead to multiple great ones. Some of the most followed “viners” post something new daily, and although many of the things they share are great, some of them are duds. Instead of quitting, they continue to share different videos and make something new consistently. In education, we might try something new and it doesn’t work the way we expected, but we need to continue on pushing new ideas and focusing on what works best for kids. Even in my own blog, some of my posts are better than others, but I focus on continuing to write instead of focusing on something that I feel did not turn out the way I wanted it to. Many teachers self-identify as “perfectionists” but here is the reality; if you are waiting for “perfect”, you will be waiting forever. Being “perfect” and “learning” do not go hand-in-hand, so we have to keep trying and taking the good with the bad in our pursuit of growth.
3. You are more likely to grow if you support others, as opposed to only focusing on yourself. One of the things that I noticed about some of the most followed “Viners” is that they don’t just share their content, but the content of others. It is their way of pushing the community and helping everyone to get better, not just trying to be the best. In education, the people that are often the most successful are usually the ones that connect and support others. People are drawn to those that give themselves to others, and that often comes back to the individual when those come back to support them. In leadership and education, the people that are the most successful, are the ones that support and make those that surround them better. A teacher’s and leader’s legacy is not in what they do, but what is made by those they support.
As I wrote this post, I realized that these ideas for innovation that I connected from watching Vine, are universal in so many other areas. How will you apply them in your work?
