Flipgrid is a web-based platform for video conversations in the classroom.  It essentially “flips” the conversation from written to video.  Flipgrid is a simple, easy to use way to instantly provide student choice in how they show what they know.  It’s also really, really fun!  Welcome to Day 87 of 365 Ideas for Office 365, a way overdue article on Flipgrid. 

What is Flipgrid for?

At its most basic Flipgrid is a way for teachers to pose a question or questions to students and allow them to record their answer.  This has obvious appeal to students with writing difficulty.  As a former Special Education teacher, I can easily recall dozens of students that could tell me a correct answer verbally, but couldn’t find a way to earn points when the had to write that answer down.  For other students, it’s simply a matter of preference, or of creative expression.

Grids and Topics

To start, the teacher creates a “Grid”.  Think of this as your classroom.  Within your Grid, you create Topics.  Each Topic can be a single assignment.  You can simply write your prompt, but since you are asking your students to record themselves, I recommend you also record yourself asking your questions and explaining your directions.

App-smashing with Flipgrid

Flipgrid allows you to add resources to your Topics, too.  You can add the url to a video in Stream or YouTube, or to a Nearpod lesson, or maybe a Quizlet page for vocabulary.  Remember that every Office 365 Word document or PowerPoint, as well as every Google Doc or Slides presentation, have their own url, so you have many options to add content directly within Flipgrid.

Settings

Depending on your goals, as well as the amount of faith you have in your students, your settings include toggling on or off things like video moderation and student responses.  If you trust your students completely, turn off moderation.  When they post their video, everyone in the Grid (your class) will be able to see it.  If you are concerned about inappropriate content, even though they can’t post anonymously, so they WILL get caught, turn on moderation.  Nothing appears to the class until you approve it.  But, if you never approve anything, then only you and the student that submitted will see the video.  That means if you want to use Flipgrid just for private video submissions, simply turn on Moderation and don’t approve anything.

However, Flipgrid at its best is a video conversation, and conversations are two-way.  So you can also choose to allow students to reply to each other’s videos by recording a video response.

There’s a lot more to Flipgrid, so I think we’ll have to write a few more articles on it in the next few days!

If you haven’t tried Flipgrid yet, click here to get started!

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