Flipgrid as a "Turn-in Bin"

Like many of you before me, I've been struck with Flipgrid fever. This simple, yet powerful tool has transformed many of my classroom discussions and activities, providing a space for students to develop their voice. There have been many relatively recent posts about different ways to use Flipgrid in the classroom.

Catch the Flipgrid Fever
17 ways to incorporate #Flipgridfever in your classroom
End of Year Engagement

I would like to add one more...

As an educator reaching the end of the school year, last week students noticed that I had not created our traditional Edmodo turn-in bin for their Scientist Wanted assignment. As I quickly reached my laptop to create it, I also realized that we would probably not have time to do all presentations. Pondering that thought, inspiration struck. What if instead of simply providing me the link, they also had to create a quick video on Flipgrid, which their peers could then watch and comment upon? I shifted focus to create the Grid, which takes all of two minutes, and vaguely remembered that when submitting a video response you can add a link, and that is when everything coalesced.

I showed students the "main grid" and showed them the prompt:

Introduce the scientist you researched (use his/her full name) and tell us about him/her. Share the information that you think would encourage us to know more. 

When you submit your video, add the link to the poster you created. You are able to do this on the screen where you add your name and the title of your video (name of your scientist).

AFTER you have completed your own video, come back, watch at least one video from your peers and respond to the information about the scientist presented.

With the addition of that final line in the prompt, not only did I get their work and presentation, but also created a space for peer-interaction on the content. This was an EOY activity, but I am now thinking that in future iterations of this, I could change the presentation to a reflection or provide a more specific prompt or frames for the peer commenting.


I would love to know how you use Flipgrid, and if you try it as a turn-in bin, would love to know how it went. Perhaps you may even be tempted to look at some of my students' work and comment on it :)

Digital Citizenship - #IronChef edition

A few days ago, @goformative shared @jcorippo's interview on Every Classroom Matters, "What I learned About Student Engagement from Watching TV". In it, he describes an interesting Iron Chef-inspired protocol he developed to modernize and re-energise the traditional jigsaw activity we learned about in our certification courses.

I immediately became intrigued by the idea, thinking not only of how I could use it in my Science class but also how useful it could be in other content areas. As I thought of the possibilities, I decided that a topic that would lend itself well to this protocol was our Digital Citizenship unit. For starters, my students receive this information from several teachers at the start of every school year, but as the year progresses they start "forgetting" about it and begin to copy/pasting material without proper attribution. They also, because they hear it from adults, often do not pay as close attention to it as they should. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that using this strategy would not only be beneficial at the start of a school year having the different groups present their 30-second slides and hearing the information over and over from each other, but also that I could, every month or so, have a random group present again as a refresher. Even better, as issues will inevitably arise with some of the content (oversharing, cyberbullying, plagiarism, etc.) I could call on those experts to once again present their Iron Chef work whenever it is appropriate.

With this idea in mind, I created three Iron Chef templates (going along with our school mantra "Respectful, Responsible and Safe).

https://goo.gl/sbe8zE

https://goo.gl/Sffdc2

https://goo.gl/CsY6Fa

For each of them, I also have a secret ingredient Flipgrid (made public), in which each of the experts will post their key takeaways, and that I am also envisioning using as a reference whenever only a specific group or student needs a private reminder.

As this is my first foray into this activity, I would find your comments useful. Have you tried something like this?