Sparking Curiosity Using "Vibby"

On page 91 of George Loewenstein's Literature Review, Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation, he discusses research on a construct referred to as "Involuntary Curiosity". Loewenstein notes that understanding, and being able to leverage, this form of curiosity is useful for educators, specifically at the elementary and secondary levels, as it is the direct result of an unintentional exposure to a curiosity-inducing stimuli. 

While many students come into our classrooms naturally curious, I find beginning class each day with a video clip that uses one, or a combination of, an Involuntary Curiosity "spark" to be a very engaging way to begin class and carve out cognitive space for subsequent moments of direct instruction. Moreover, from an pedagogical perspective, I find the challenge of sparking Involuntary Curiosity to be a rewarding and creative part of lesson planning. 

Loewesntein notes five Involuntary Curiosity sparks, with three of them being of particular interest to educators: 

1. Presence missing information. (The "Missing Information" Spark)
2. An expected, but unknown solution. (The "Anticipated Information" Spark)
3. The violation of expectations. (The "Surprising Information" Spark)

Exposing students to quick, edited video clips, as noted above, can be an effective way of sparking Involuntary Curiosity. While downloading a video directly, and using  editing software to capture the spark is useful, times to do arise when editing and sharing a video directly online is desired. Specifically, when challenging students to spark curiosity in their peers, or asking colleagues to share curiosity sparks with one another,  creating an online archive of clips that can be shared without directly downloading the video is desirable. 

In the past, I used TubeChop to trim videos for Involuntary Curiosity online. While simple to use, TubeChop lacks the ability to view the trimmed clip in full screen, does not allow for trimming of multiple parts of the video into one single video clip, and does not allow for archiving and sharing of clips within their system. Enter VIbby! Vibby allows you to do all of the tasks mentions above, with  the additional ability to create "Collections" within in your profile that can allow for sorting of sparks by content domain. 

Below is a screencast of me surfing the site, and experimenting with the trimming and archiving features of Vibby.