A few weeks ago, thanks to the Twitter universe, I stumbled upon an educational tool called “Flipgrid” (@flipgrid – sidenote, their team looks like a hoot based upon their Twitter cover photo.)  Flipgrid’s website touts their product as:

“Flipgrid is where your students go to share ideas and learn together. It’s where students amplify and feel amplified. It’s video the way students use video. Short. Authentic. And fun! That’s why it’s the leading video discussion platform used by tens of millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and families in 150 countries.” (Source: www.flipgrid.com)

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to use it at first.  My initial thought was about it being something that dazzles but isn’t really practical nor pedagogically sound.  Why use Flipgrid’s video conversation when students can just talk to one another?  Secondly, I thought about the cost.  We’re teachers, we’re on a budget, either ours or our school’s.  We don’t have money to waste on something that isn’t going to have a dramatic effect on learning in our classrooms.  Then I tried Flipgrid on a whim.  And I love it.

April 4th, 2018 was the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination and I needed a knock-it-out-of-the-park way for students to remember and reflect upon his legacy.  I don’t like when MLK is an add-on, and I always do my best to make sure students understand what MLK worked for and how it affects their lives today no matter how they identify.  Working in a US I curriculum makes it particularly challenging to organically teach MLK’s role in the Civil Rights Movement, his work for all people who are impoverished, and his protest of the Vietnam War, but trying is better than doing nothing at all.

This year I chose to modify a lesson from Teaching Tolerance (@tolerance_org) and used Flipgrid to make that modification.  My students are in the middle of planning a walkout to protest gun violence in America, so they focused on Dr. King’s quote:

Teaching Tolerance provided reflection questions, as well, and after talking about the quote for a while both with each other and with me, I gave students ten minutes to respond to the following questions:

• Do you agree that standing up against racism and injustice is a moral obligation? A matter of self-respect? A demonstration of love? Why?
• What would have happened if Dr. King and other activists had “slowed up” during the Movement? If they hadn’t “kept moving,” how would your life be different today? How would our “democratic way of life” be different?
• How did King’s leadership — and the outcomes of the Civil Rights Movement — expand the meaning of the “democratic way of life” in the U.S.?
• Describe one way racism remains a problem in the U.S. today. Do you have a “moral obligation to press on”? Why?

We are a 1:1 laptop school, but in this instance, I gave each student a writing utensil and a piece of lined paper to write their responses.  Using the Circle Timer as a visual cue, each student had 10 minutes to respond to two questions of their choice.  After 10 minutes, the pencils were still going and they begged for more time and, of course, I acquiesced.  Once they were able to think carefully about MLK, his legacy, and the meaning of the above quote, we cued in Flipgrid.

For the sake of my students’ privacy, I can’t show you our personal grid, but I will use screenshots of myself and pictures from their site.  In the free version of Flip Grid, a teacher is allowed to create one class and several “grids” within the class.

Students press the plus button to take video of themselves for up to 1:30 and after making the video they take a selfie (and can decorate it with stickers!  See below.)

Partly because we were out of time, but mostly to add to their comfort level and to help me assess their understanding, I asked students to record one of their reflections; the one that they were most comfortable sharing and/or the one they felt they wrote best.  For homework, they had to watch one classmate’s video from the grid and be prepared to chat with that classmate the following day in person.  There were several advantages to having students read their reflections:

1. Students who are normally uncomfortable speaking in class had a chance to speak out loud in an atmosphere that is less of a risk to them than a traditional class discussion.
2. Students were able to hear to listen rather than hear to speak.  When they’re practicing their listening skills in-person (which is valuable) they sometimes hear what the person speaking is saying, but they’re listening just so that they can respond.  Flipgrid allowed students to listen to each other, sometimes more than once, and really HEAR what their classmate was saying.  They were able to digest the information over a few hours so that they could ask more about what their classmate was saying.
3. I was able to watch students and hear them more than once if I had to.  This greatly assisted me in assessing their understanding.
4. Students can “like” and respond to videos in many ways, but in the free version they can’t leave comments and the creator of the video can’t see WHO liked the video, just that their video has responses.  I personally like this student-feedback anonymity.

Another fabulous feature of the free version is the feedback teachers can leave for students:

I can give video feedback!  And text feedback!  And numeric feedback!  This is amazing.  Flipgrid is a thinking tool and it isn’t simply a flashy way of doing something a student could normally do as long as the teacher uses it thoughtfully.  Without the feedback feature, it would simply be a fun little tech tool.  The ability to leave feedback for students gives Flipgrid a serious use in the classroom.  In addition, teachers can have a meaningful conversation with students outside the classroom and students have another way to communicate on a platform that might be more comfortable for them.  They can also “spark” discussions prompted by other students (Almost literally.  There is a little lightning bolt on each video that students can click to indicate that they want to further discuss what is mentioned in the video.)

I am strongly considering purchasing the premium version of Flipgrid- I would like to be able to customize the rubrics for each video and also create more than one class in order to keep my grids separate.  I encourage you to check out Flipgrid and think of some ways you can use it.  How do you think you could use Flipgrid to enhance your class discussions and assessments?