Flipgrid: Students' Voices Matters! + How to Create Your Own Video Discussions For Your Students

Hello, welcome back to Little Things With Şevval. Today we are going to talk about the power of students' voices in classrooms and Flipgrid. Enjoy your reading!

What is Flipgrid?

Flipgrid is a website that allows teachers to create a communication atmosphere for their students. In this platform, teachers can create grids to enable the classroom to have video discussions. These grids are like message boards that teachers can ask questions, share different topics and ideas with their students. Also, the students can create video responses and share them via Flipgrid. 

Why Teachers Should Use It?

Unfortunately, in crowded classes, we don't have enough time to listen to our students' ideas individually. However, if teachers use Flipgrid, create interesting and level-appropriate topics, and share them with their students, all the students can have an equal chance to be heard and express their ideas. When they create video responses to the topics, they will gain personal experiences in talking about a certain topic, freely explain their ideas, and share them with their teachers and peers. Also, by using the language and having conversations, students will feel more confident, engaged, and encouraged in their language learning. That's why Flipgrid can be a very helpful tool to make the students use the language and be engaged in language classrooms.

How to Use It?

Let's talk about my experience on Flipgrid and how I created my activity for my sixth-grade students.

First of all, when you open Flipgrid, if you are a teacher, you need to open an account. However, if you are a student, you don't need an account to attend the class activities but you need classroom codes. Teachers should share their classroom codes with their students according to allow them to attend the classroom.

After signing up and creating your account, it is time to create your class groups. Also, while creating groups, you can personalize them by creating different names, adding different wallpapers, adding different participants, etc.

Here is a group that I created:

After creating the groups and adding participants, you are ready to share your creative topics with your students. As you can see there is a section called 'Topics'. In that part, you can create your own topics and share them with your students.

You can create your topic by adding a title and a descriptive question for your students. For instance, I prepared a fun topic for my students to talk about their childhood memories and express their feelings.

You can also add fun emojis, media sources, and videos to get your students' attention.

Also, you can moderate the topic by giving time limitations and allowing your students to make comments on each other's posts.

Also, teachers can see their activity on the 'Activity' part and check out recent responses and comments from their students and evaluate both their teaching and students' learning processes.

Thank you for being here and reading this blog. I hope you enjoyed it and found the information that I shared with you useful. I will see you soon. Stay safe!