Taking a silly selfie is one of my students' favorite Flipgrid features
I LOVE TECHNOLOGY! I could shout it from the rooftops. I honestly don’t know how I taught before Youtube and iPads. There are a million apps for music, but sometimes we run into a problem. If we’re sharing iPads with classroom teachers, we can’t always get all of the music apps we want and we need to make the classroom teacher's apps work for us. Therefore, I wanted to introduce you to an app that will work for you AND your classroom teachers!
If you haven’t heard of Flipgrid, make it your new best friend. With Flipgrid you create a “grid,” where teachers can pose a question that their students will respond to in videos of 90 seconds or less. Students can watch each other’s responses, “like” their videos, and record video responses. As a music teacher, I saw Flipgrid as a platform for students to create short musical pieces with me and their peers.
If you haven’t heard of Flipgrid, make it your new best friend. With Flipgrid you create a “grid,” where teachers can pose a question that their students will respond to in videos of 90 seconds or less. Students can watch each other’s responses, “like” their videos, and record video responses. As a music teacher, I saw Flipgrid as a platform for students to create short musical pieces with me and their peers.
|
Here’s how I’ve used it so far: my 5th graders created ostinatos using their names. They could use just their first name, their first and last, or their first and middle and last. They repeated their ostinatos and layered them over each other, adding body percussion. This is where Flipgrid comes in. Logged into the 5th grade grid, they recorded their layered ostinatos and took a silly selfie for the thumbnail of the video. If they had extra time, they got to watch other groups’ videos. Even the kid that was rolling his eyes at the beginning of class (you know that kid) was totally enthralled.
But here’s the real genius of using Flipgrid. The next time each class came, they created self reflection responses to their videos. They used a rubric and shared what they did well and what they could have done better. Later on, I was able to watch their original video composition and their reflections. Such a simple app was turned into a powerful assessment tool. So how can you do this too? Go to www.flipgrid.com and make a free Flipgrid account. Make a grid. You can have students log in with a password or with QR codes (I just created an account for each iPad, not each student.) That’s it! GET FLIPPING! |
If you have any questions, come see me at the October workshop with James Harding! Like I said, I love technology, and I love helping other people love technology too.
-Alexis Kagel
RSS Feed