So here’s a simple — albeit surprising — truth about Bill Ferriter: I’m actually a tech skeptic.
I’m NOT the guy who is jumping on every new digital bandwagon from day one, trying to be the first to figure out how the “hot new tool” can be used in my classroom. In fact, when I see teachers flipping out about a new service in social spaces like Twitter, I bristle — questioning whether their enthusiasm is because the tool facilitates good teaching and learning or whether their enthusiasm is a function of following the fads.
That’s why I’ve resisted even giving Flipgrid — a service that facilitates video based reflections and connections between students and teachers — a look.
Buried in Flipgrid Tweets that seemed to celebrate “making videos” over “engaging in meaningful demonstrations of mastery,” I assumed that Flipgrid was just another tool that teachers were excited about because it was new — and there’s nothing that I hate more than deciding to integrate new technology into the classroom just because “the kids might like it” or “everyone else is doing it.”
I don’t need #flipgridfever. I need tools that support the kinds of practices that I believe in.
But I started tinkering with Flipgrid this week — using it to create a space where my students can reflect on and wonder about the parts of flowering plants — and I’ve become convinced that it can play a meaningful role in my classroom.
Here’s why: Flipgrid allows me to redefine what “assessment” can look like in my classroom.
Each video recording that my students make lets me see what they know about the content that we are studying in class in the same way that small conversations and interactions allow teachers to assess the progress that students are making towards mastery. The difference is that I now have a tangible artifact that I can use as a record of those individual conversations.
That’s valuable.
Just as valuable, however, is that Flipgrid has allowed me to have MORE of those small conversations and interactions with students. The simple truth is that with 35 kids in every class and 120 kids on my team, I just can’t have meaningful assessment conversations with every kid, every day.
But because student responses are recorded in Flipgrid and I can return to them later — during my planning period, when I’m sitting on the couch at night staring at my phone, over the weekend — those interpersonal interactions become more frequent for more students.
What I love the BEST about Flipgrid, though, is that it allows me to redefine what “feedback” looks like, too — and that’s something I’m incredibly passionate about.
After watching each video, I can record a short reply commenting on the thinking students shared. I can challenge misconceptions that I see, celebrate mastery, ask interesting questions, and show that my own thinking was pushed by something that my kids shared in their recordings.
That’s SUPER powerful, y’all.
The sad truth is that in most schools, students hesitate to share their thinking publicly because they feel like they are being evaluated in every interaction. That’s because the pattern of feedback in classrooms has always been “I make a contribution, the teacher examines my contribution, and the teacher rates me.”
But every interaction that I have with students in Flipgrid gives me the chance to reinforce the notion that feedback ISN’T about evaluation. Instead, feedback is about giving learners chances to polish their ideas and their skills without risk.
I also hope that over time, I’ll be able to get students to start giving each other feedback on their video responses. That’s for a practical reason: When students rely only on teachers for feedback, the amount of feedback that they actually receive will always be limited. If we can teach students to reliably look to one another for feedback, they should have tons more chances to have their thinking challenged.
More importantly, when peer to peer feedback is done well, it creates a trusting classroom environment where kids know that they can take intellectual risks in front of one another without fear of ridicule or embarrassment. Flipgrid could facilitate that trusting environment by providing tangible evidence to every kid that their thinking will be met with supportive — instead of critical — responses by the peers they are sitting alongside in each and every classroom.
Here are two tech takeaways:
Flipgrid is incredibly easy to use: Seriously. Like amazingly easy to use. Teachers can create forums — which Flipgrid calls “Topics” — for student reflection that are public or private, moderated or not in minutes — and after sharing the link to individual topics, students can record short video responses with just one click.
In my classroom — stocked with dozens of Chromebooks that I’ve purchased over the years — those responses are done most frequently using the webcams on our computers. Some students have also put the Flipgrid app on their own phones and tablets to make “recording on the go” easier.
Regardless, no usernames and passwords are required and the technology has worked without any fails or flaws for the entire week. That kind of consistency and approachability make Flipgrid a tool that can be adopted by any teacher or group of students without any learning curve at all.
Flipgrid’s free version is good. It’s paid version is better: Flipgrid has two pricing options — Flipgrid One and Flipgrid Classroom. Flipgrid One is free and allows teachers to do a TON of cool stuff with kids, but has some limitations.
The first limitation that caught my eye was that the landing page for a teacher’s topic boards can’t be customized — think “flipgrid.com/ca70de” versus “flipgrid.com/spartanscience”. That may seem like a small detail, but anyone who has ever struggled to point kids to web based resources knows first-hand the headaches that come from complicated web addresses.
The second limitation that caught my eye is that Flipgrid One allows students to post new reflections, but does NOT allow them to reply to the reflections of their classmates. Given that I want kids interacting with one another — not just me — in social learning spaces, that’s a big deal. The “trusting environment where peer feedback is just as important as teacher feedback” that I describe above isn’t possible with Flipgrid’s free account.
So I ponied up $65 for Flipgrid Classroom — which feels like a reasonable price for the extra features that I now have access to.
Long story short: I’m adding Flipgrid to my bag of classroom tools.
Not because it’s a hot new tool, but instead because it allows me to easily redefine and reimagine what “feedback” and “assessment” can look like in my classroom.
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