I bought my daughter’s Halloween costume two months ago. Two months early. That’s a record for me, considering I’m normally throwing up decorations only hours before the first trick-or-treaters arrive on my doorstep. She’s been wearing this costume off and on all month. To the zoo, to Grandma’s house, to school, and now out trick-or-treating. And you know what? No matter how many times I’ve seen the costume, there are still handfuls of people who melt over my daughter’s gleeful “neighing” because the costume is new to them (although, I won’t lie, I still giggle every time I see her butt wiggle as she gallops away from me).
I was worried about writing this post, because I know that Flipgrid is to many people like my daughter’s horse costume is to me: Nothing new. #flipgridfever really took off at ISTE 2019 this year, but it wasn’t until recently that I took the time to really explore it. And…I’m obsessed. For those of you who don’t know, Flipgrid is, at its simplest level, a platform where teachers can post a prompt and students can respond with short videos. The best part is that it all acts like a discussion thread, where students can view and respond to each other with videos of their own.
The greatest part of Flipgrid is the ease with which students can use it. At a training I held for teachers last week, I threw in a Flipgrid just to see what would happen. I didn’t provide any sort of scaffolds for my beginning tech users, and I didn’t have any instructions. All I did was provide them with a link to my Flipgrid prompt and told them to click the green button and record a response. I left out all sorts of good instructional moves and waited for the room to implode. Then, a teaching miracle happened: It went off without a hitch. Even the most novice tech users in attendance were able to quickly record a response to the prompt and view the videos others had mad. Magic.
Now, while I wouldn’t recommend throwing out a link to students and simply crossing my fingers that they can make Flipgrid work, I would recommend it as an easy way to switch things up in the classroom. You can start small: Use it as a getting-to-know you and community-building activity. Provide a question that can be answered briefly, and scaffold students’ answers by providing sentence stems. Even try allowing students to use the stickers feature to hide their faces with emojis, masks, or sunglasses. Start by keeping the stakes low, then later you can shoot for the moon.
Below is a quick tutorial on the basics of Flipgrid if you’re ready to get started.
Don’t let Flipgrid spook you–it’s a real treat of a tech tool. Happy Halloween!
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