Ms. Pugh's Tech Site

What is Flipgrid?

FlipGrid is an awesome website that teachers can use to make their virtual classroom even more fun for their students! It allows them to create discussions in which they can film a video lesson and post it to their class group. FlipGrid also has a feature in which students can respond to the video lessons with another video, and then the teacher can give video feedback to the student's response videos! It is such a great feature that can be added to any classroom, I highly recommend it!

Discussions

This is what the general layout of FlipGrid looks like when creating a discussion. Here I have an example of a Kindergarten discussion I made using a science standard that involves using physical properties words to describe objects! Before posting a discussion, you must first create a group. This includes implementing the name of each student in your class or group, and assigning them a "password". Passwords can be as simple as the student's initials, or even just a two digit number! Once a group has been created, you can then post a discussion in which you give a lesson, propose a question, or anything you want! The options are limitless! Once your video is posted, you can send the "join code" to your students. The students can then click on the link, watch your video, and respond!

Responses and Feedback

You can see that your students have responded to your video by clicking on the discussion and scrolling down to responses. As you can see, I recieved four responses from all of my group members on my physical properties video. All you have to do to view their responses is click play on the video! It is so simple! In my opinion, the best feature that FlipGrid has to offer is the ability the teacher has to provide feedback for their students on their responses. If you are introducing students to a new topic, or revisiting a challening one, this feature can be extremely helpful. You can help your students understand what they did well, and help them correct any mistakes they may have made in their response video. Although the student's response videos can be viewed by anyone in the group, the feedback you provide is only visible to the student in which you are giving it to. FlipGrid also tells you which students you have provided feedback to with the green check indicator under the "feedback" collum that can be seen in the first photo.

Other Features

Even though FlipGrid offers discussion, response, and feedback options, there are also a number of other awesome features that can be found on the website! Once you create an educator account, you can use the toolbar at the top to go through all the different features. The first one next to discussions is "Discover". After clicking this tab, you will be able to see thousands of different topics that have been created by other educators, authors, museums, etc. that you can use to start a discussion for your class! This feature is so awesome because it allows you to brainstorm with other creators and use their ideas to spark some excitement in your classroom. You can scroll through all the different topics and collections. They can be sorted by topic, subject, or age range to help you narrow down your search. Once you find one of interest, you can add it to your favorites to refer back to!

The next tab is "Activity". After clicking this tab, you will be shown a snapshot of the different interactions that have occured on your FlipGrid page. These interactions include things such as groups you have created, topics you have created, number of responsed you have recieved, and total views. There are also different achievement goals you can meet that are set by FlipGrid. Although this category does not have much to offer in terms of being an academic resource, it is sometimes nice to refer to this data and see what is going on with your account!

The next tab is titles "Mixtapes". Personally, this is one of my favorite features offered by FlipGrid. It allows you to select responses that have been given to your students, and combine them into one long "highlight reel" type of video. This feature can be used in so many different awesome ways. For example, a teacher can post a discussion, view the responses, and pick out some of the best ones (or all of them) and combine them into a video and share it with the class. This is great because it allows students to see what their peers said, and learn from eachother! It also makes it so much easier for the teacher because it allows them to combine all the responses into one video without having to do any kind of confusing editing!

The next tab is titled "shorts". This feature is also very cool, and can be a helpful tool with virtual learning. Teachers can use this feature to record videos such as lessons, tutorials, etc. It is very similar to how a discussion video is made, however, shorts do not require groups to be formed, and they are public videos. Once the video is created, it can be shared through a link, or a Q.R. code! Once the video is shared, anyone who has the link or the Q.R. code can view it! It is similar to a Youtube video, however, you can use all the cool effects and writing features to edit your video right on FlipGrid.

Video Effects and Editing

One of the best things about FlipGrid is that it is very user friendly. It allows you to do so many awesome things to enhance your videos, without having to use any confusing video editing software. Once your video is recorded, you can trim it to remove the sections you do not want included on the video. You can also add filters, frames, and emoji stickers, which makes the video look more appealing to your students! Another awesome feature is that FlipGrid allows you to add text on top of your videos, such as the text seen in the picture to the right. This can be very helful when it comes to explaining certain subjects, that may require visual representation of the content as well as the teacher speaking. All in all, I think FlipGrid is a fantastic website and can be a great resource for teachers to use in their classrooms!