Vine: If you aren't already using it, give it a try

Look. I just met my Reynolds High School Journalism Institute Hot Topics video requirement with this awesome video from Vine. It was so totally easy. And it allows Anita Luera to share a special message just for you (along with me whispering "Action!"). Hit the sound button when you mouse over the video to hear what she has to say. Of course the instructor wants your video to relate to your post. And he wants much more substance than this in the text portion of your post.

Steve Elliott
Arizona State University
Phoenix

You may have noticed that the syllabus requires you to offer video with one of your posts on the Hot Topics site. Not to worry. First of all, the requirement is just to have video, not video that's edited. So a sound bite or scene is just fine. It can even be a relevant video you embed from YouTube. Your instructor has small video cameras to loan and will be available during lab hours to help everyone meet this requirement. All he wants is for you to have the experience of incorporating video with Web content.

One of the easiest ways to share video is Vine, Twitter's free video app and a social media channel that's extremely popular among teens. If you have a smartphone and haven't used Vine, you may want to read on for instructions on how to use it with your posts on Blogger. It's really fun, and it increases your "hip" factor by 500 percent.



Vine is great because it shoots just six seconds of video (or less) and uploads it so easily you won’t believe it. Just find the video you want to share in your Vine stream, click the three dots at bottom right, say you want to share the post, then say you want to embed the post. Vine generates an email you can send to yourself. Open the link on a computer and you’ll get a prompt asking you for a size. I suggest 320px, though 480px should work. Vine automatically generates code that you can copy and paste into a Blogger post.

To embed the code, you have to switch from Compose view to HTML view in Blogger. Then change back for the rest of your post.

Give it a try. Vine is easy, fun and, best of all, free.

Steve Elliott
Arizona State University
Phoenix