Flipping for Flipgrid

Flipgrid

Check out this screencast to see how to use Flipgrid.

What Is It?

Flipgrid is a website that allows teachers to post a question and students can respond via a short video with their answer. Student videos get posted to the 'grid' and other students in the class can watch their peers and respond back with either comments or another video. Videos can be no longer than 5:00 minutes. Teachers can watch student responses and leave feedback or reply via video. 

Benefits of Flipgrid: 

• It's interactive. Students get to respond to me and to each other either via text or video. 
• It's engaging. Students get to make a video and "decorate" with stickers and emojis. 
• It's easy to use for both students and teachers. Teachers can check for prior knowledge, get feedback during a lesson or hear student reflections after a lesson. 
• Allows teachers to hear from every student even if they don't like to participate in whole class discussion.
• Students can hear many different perspectives. 
• Opportunity to teaches digital citizenship.
• It's free. All teachers get one free grid.

In My Class This Week:

I started reading about Flipgrid earlier this semester when I was researching my EdTech presentation on flipped learning. My class is ELA and we do a ton of writing so I think that if students can  have an opportunity to get their thoughts and ideas across to me without have to write a paragraph or essay they are going to be thrilled. (However for my first 'real' assignment they are actually going to have to do both). I had students record a basic trial video introducing themselves and answering our "Would You Rather... Wednesday Question" via Flipgrid instead of on Google Classroom. For the first go-round it wasn't too bad. There were a few growing pains as we learned how to share the space so that everyone could be heard while they were recording, but it was their first experience and that's to be expected. 
We are going to do our first real assignment later this week. We are watching a tv version of the story we just read. After we finish watching the movie, students will respond to whether they like the book or movie version of our current story better. Traditionally, I have students write this as an opinion paragraph. I'm still going to have them write the paragraph because 1). they need the practice, but 2). I want to make sure they have good content in their video. 'The Would You Rather Responses' were a little light on details. I'm hoping if they prepare ahead of time then they'll give me enough information to show understanding. As we practice, this step will hopefully become less necessary.