9 New Ways to Use Flipgrid in the Classroom
Flipgrid, as we all know, is a video-sharing program that is extremely popular in schools—so popular that its quick rise has been dubbed “Flipgrid Fever” because of its widespread use. Following Microsoft’s acquisition of the tool, it has been available for educators to use for more than a year at no cost.
The fact that Flipgrid is so simple to use is one of its primary advantages. Teachers establish grids, which serve as communities for students to work in, after setting up an account and creating grids. Within each grid, the teacher creates prompts called subjects, and students respond to the prompts and each other’s videos by posting video responses and replies to their videos. The majority of the movies are brief, lasting only a minute or two, and the technology is basic enough that even kindergarten students can use it.
There are nine new ways to utilize Flipgrid. 1. Using the video QR code to share book reviews: With Flipgrid’s new augmented reality (AR) function, teachers and classroom librarians may use the video QR code to provide an interesting way for students to contribute book reviews. The teacher can print the QR code and clip it to the book after a student records their review. The student’s classmates can then use their devices to scan the code and watch the review to assist them to decide whether or not they want to read the book.
The opportunity to improve one’s world language skills: Flipgrid enables teachers in many districts and from other nations to collaborate. It also provides an opportunity for students to practice their public speaking skills in front of a broader audience than simply their class, which is beneficial for world language teachers. As a result, instead of being limited to practicing with the people in their physical classroom, students can engage and improve their skills by conversing with other students around the world who are studying the same language or by conversing with native speakers of that language. Students can post videos to get practice with the vocabulary they are learning.
The accessibility of Flipgrid has been enhanced to guarantee that all students can participate. Flipgrid has also increased the number of accessibility tools available to students. When students are watching videos, they can turn on closed captioning, which will also provide a full transcript for each video. When used in conjunction with closed captioning or any text inside a topic, Microsoft’s Immersive Reader can be used to read texts aloud and split up words into syllables to make decoding more straightforward.
9 NEW WAYS TO USE FLIPGRID
Invitations to external speakers: Teachers can invite external speakers to engage in classroom discussions by using the Guest Mode feature. Visitors can view student videos and upload their movies to the site. Using this feature, specialists in a subject can share their expertise asynchronously, with students uploading films of their queries for the expert to respond to at a convenient time in a video response. Engineers or scientists, for example, could be invited to speak with students about their employment and studies, as well as to answer questions from students.
5. Creating student portfolios: A teacher can design a grid for students to use in their portfolio creation. Student films describing their work, demonstrating recently taught skills, or reflecting on an in-class experience are posted within this grid, which is created by the teacher for each student. The teacher can provide a link to a student’s topic to their parents or guardians so that they can keep track of their child’s progress throughout the year. Students can see their classmates’ work because the topics can be made available to all of the students in the class at the same time.
Students have the option of writing directly on video as they record it, as well as adding sticky notes with additional text when they record it. 6. Adding annotations This function is particularly useful for students in math who are practicing problem solving or for students in chemistry who are learning to balance chemical equations because it allows them to demonstrate their reasoning.
The process of compiling a mixtape is a means to collect videos from any topic or grid in a centralized area. An individual student video can be selected by a teacher and added to a mixtape, which can then be shared with the entire class. Using the function to collect memories from throughout the year is a fantastic approach to make the most of the feature: As the school year proceeds, the instructor can save intriguing films or significant moments from many themes for later viewing. Students will be better able to recollect what they’ve studied if they watch the mixtape together at the end of the year.
8. Sharing and celebrating work: Because of time restrictions in the classroom, it is all too easy to forget about celebrating completed projects or completed assignments. Flipgrid, on the other hand, makes it simple and quick. Everyone in the class can view and comment on each other’s movies if they choose the option for student-to-student replies (see below). For example, students in a history class could present a long-term project that they had completed, explaining what they had learned and what they had built in the process of doing so. Peers in the class create video responses to the work that has been completed, providing positive feedback on the work done. When I do this with my ELA students, I need them to remark on two or three classmates’ projects from any of my sections before moving on to the next one.
9. Providing support for absent students: Flipgrid can be used as a make-up alternative for students who have missed class. Students can post short videos on assignments completed in class if they are absent from class for a specified length of time. This allows absent students to rapidly catch up on what they have missed during the period in which they were absent.