Flipgrid has been around for awhile now, but I didn’t jump on the bandwagon until this year when my colleague Sarah took the time to show me how amazing it is. Flipgrid has become so important this year, because hybrid learning makes it very difficult to assess speaking. Assigning students a Flipgrid video gives them an opportunity to practice speaking, and since the videos are private (unless I get their permission to share them), it’s a fairly non-threatening environment.
Here’s what I love about Flipgrid:
-I can moderate videos, which means I can keep them private. Some of my students, who are in their first year of French and have fewer opportunities to speak than they normally would, feel self-conscious about speaking, and having all their classmates view their videos would increase their anxiety.
-Students can easily add emojis, filters, and images. Not only does this add a little excitement to the assignment and make it more fun, it allows students to hide their faces, and for some students, that decreases their anxiety about speaking. I also incorporated emojis into an assignment where the emojis represented the vocabulary they were using in their video
-It’s integrated with Microsoft, so students can use accounts they already have (this is really important in New York State, where everything has to be Ed. Law 2D compliant).
-I can create a sample video for them to view or respond to, as well as written instructions.
-Students can write a script that appears on the screen as they read it.
The only thing I don’t love is that it is not currently synced with Canvas, our school’s LMS, which means students don’t get a notification reminding them if it’s overdue, and I don’t get a notification on Canvas if a student submits a video. I have enabled email notifications, but I never seem to get them. This means, if a student submits a video late, they must inform me so I know to look at it.
The first assignment I gave with Flipgrid was for students to watch my video and answer my three questions. Here is a sample of the results that I put on my class blog (as always, email subscribers will have to visit the post on the blog to see it):
