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Flipgrid

Google Applied Digital Skills + Flipgrid in Middle School

December 12, 2018

At the beginning of this school year, our Creative Technology teachers were hoping to find some new lessons to infuse digital learning into our existing projects – specifically, we were looking for a new way to teach spreadsheets that would be engaging and relevant for students at the middle school level. The Applied Digital Skills curriculum from Google seemed like a great, free option and luckily, Brittany from Google, Chicago was able to give us more insight into the lessons and answer some of our questions.

That’s where the “Guide to An Area” lesson really fit with our classes. In this lesson, students utilize the design thinking process to identify and empathize with a specific audience in order to create a guide to an area with their interests and needs in mind. Once students choose an area and audience, students use Google Sheets to create a list of locations and details to add to their guide. During the process, students learn how to utilize formatting options in Google Sheets to change the way data is displayed, and how to use data validation to create a rating scale for their locations.

The first few steps are pretty useful for middle school students to learn. The unit is taken to the next level when students use the Google Apps Script Editor to code their own interactive sidebar for their guide that features Google Maps 360 street view images! It was a challenging but satisfying experience for my students, and they were visibly excited when their code would execute properly and their sidebar worked!

The grand finale of the unit is when students learn how to import their Sheets file to a Google MyMaps. The pins on the map auto-populate from the data in the student-created guides. Students can customize their pins any way they want. Again, when students saw the map layout auto-generate before their eyes, their reactions were pretty amazing. One of my students was very invested in this project and was excited to take on the challenge of coding for the first time as well as expressing his creativity through his Guide to Woodstock project. See his screenshare below!

An Area Guide to Woodstock

In the end, this lesson was engaging, challenging, and definitely rewarding. But I wanted to find a solution to really wrap up, reflect, and assess the project in a memorable way. Instead of sitting through a day (or two) of student presentations to the class, students would film screencasts explaining their project to a viewer, and post the videos to a class Flipgrid topic.

This way, students could watch their classmates’ presentations in any order they wanted, at their own speed, at school, or even at home. In true middle school fashion, the students really enjoyed the social aspects of Flipgrid: responding and collecting “likes” on their videos! It was really fun to add that final layer of creativity, collaboration, and communication using Flipgrid at the end of our lesson. Here’s what they had to say when asked what they learned during this lesson and how they may use it in the future:

“One digital skill I picked up from this activity was the skill of creating a pivot table. This skill will be helpful in the future because I can use it in future google sheets. This skill is important because it keeps my choices organized, and make the whole rating process less tedious than what it would be like without the pivot table.”

“Just about everything. Before, spreadsheets weren’t exciting.”

“How to make a sidebar. This might be useful if I want to include more information in a fun, different way.”

Jen Leban is a creative technology teacher and former visual arts teacher at Sandburg Middle School in Elmhurst, IL. She is a Google Certified Innovator and roller skating enthusiast. You can follow her on Twitter (@MrsLeban) or check out her blog at LebanTeachTech.com to see how she combines technology and creativity in the classroom! 

Flipgrid Leave a Comment

What is Up with Flipgrid and Book Creator? Big Updates Announced!

August 17, 2018

TODAY on EduSlam we release the fourth short video in our two-week series: 

What’s Up with Flipgrid and BookCreator? Big Updates Announced!

⏯  To watch the video which will be released today but disappear on Sept 4

✅ Sign-up HERE

______________

Get Up to Speed with Flipgrid?

On August 1, Flipgrid announced some very powerful updates to the platform since being bought by Microsoft, and teachers everywhere cheered with excitement.

✅Let’s check some of them 0ut!!

1. Three New Ways to Make Grids

Flipgrid now has only three ways you can make grids to keep kids safe and access easy. We will go over those quickly on the EduSlam – and you will be in know!

2. GridPals – Uber Connections

Now there are #GridPals because connecting kids is at the heart and soul of everything we believe in and this permanent addition of #GridPals is game-changing. It allows teachers everywhere to easily find another class – anywhere in the world – and ask to connect with them around a shared interest.

Want to discuss a book with students in another country? Or teach another class about your geographic region? The world is your oyster with this new addition to Flipgrid! It is easy for teachers to break down the four walls of their classrooms and open up students minds to different views and ways of living. I am so excited about this I get chills.

To get involved, all you need to do is go to the top of the dashboard and choose #GridPals. Next, click on ACTIVE, and then update your profile with important information like grade, subject and location and… voila – let the collaborative magic begin.

Flipgrid knowledge from Holly Clark and Eduslam

3. The Camera Views and Editing

Flipgrid camera views explained by Holly Clark's EduSlamNow students can change the orientation of the camera – WHILE filming!

Students can start with a portrait shot and then turn the camera to landscape to reveal something more. This update allows kids to be so creative with their responses – and should make it even easier to create high-interest recordings that expand the focus from just them.

For those kids that mess up at the end of a response or recording – and would usually have to re-record – they can now EASILY edit that mistake out! No need to re-record just tap the scissors icon and do what 80’s sitcom star  Dave Coulier says… CUT IT OUT!

Get Up To Speed with Book Creator?

The next big thing in the technology-infused classrooms is Book Creator for Chrome. As we get ready to publish The Chromebook Infused Classroom soon, all things point to Book Creator as the game changer in the Chromebook Classroom.

You will now be able to embed ANYTHING into the book – making this an amazing learning journal  – or the perfect place for students to turn in demonstrations of learning and self-reflection.

Here is a video preview of what is to come.

 

Stay tuned on hollyclark.org as we will offer tutorial videos on this in the next couple of weeks to get your ready for the powerful use of Book Creator in your classroom.

 

To learn more – watch the EduSlam or check out The Google Infused Classroom

Holly Clark and Tanya Avrith - eduslam authors

Holly Clark and Tanya Avrith

?blog hollyclark.org

 

 

 

 

 

Google Infused Classroom by Holly Clark and Tanya Avrith

[themify_button bgcolor=”blue” size=”large” link=”https://www.amazon.com/Google-Infused-Classroom-Holly-Clark/dp/1945167165/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1534126665&sr=1-3&dpID=51j3MjKMGlL&preST=_SX258_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=detail”]Buy on Amazon[/themify_button]

 

EduSlam, Flipgrid, Press Tagged: #edtechteam, Book Creator, Flipgrid, Google Inifused Classrroom, Holly Clark, Tanya Avrith Leave a Comment

Making Feedback Meaningful for Students

July 11, 2018

Teacher helping young students in a class

Feedback. I hesitate to label this a “buzzword” because feedback isn’t a concept that goes out of style. However, it often feels like that is what it has become. Teachers know they should be providing feedback. Students know they should be receiving feedback. Administrators want to see that feedback is a component in the classroom. During observations and interviews and performance reviews, the term feedback is often tossed around as if saying the word invokes its use.

My concern is that the concept has gotten a bit stagnant since it is so much easier to provide feedback with current digital tools. Please don’t misunderstand, I love that teachers and students can collaborate and comment on each other’s work in many apps for learning. It is just easy to fall into a comfortable routine of what providing feedback can look like.

For example, when my students would draft in Google Docs, I could leave comments on places for them to revisit or think about in order to improve the writing. I could even correct errors in the writing with an explanation or reference for them to review. This is not a bad way to provide feedback.

But if this is the only type of feedback I ever provide my students, I am still falling short. Feedback isn’t just about a teacher telling a student what to fix. It should also provide students an opportunity to think about their learning and apply it in the future.

According to Fast Company, as adults, students will need to know how to ask for feedback strategically. This is a skill that “will help [them] meet expectations and avoid the miscommunications that waste everyone’s time and put your prospects for growth at risk.”

Feedback goes beyond a summative or formative academic accounting of what students learn. Part of what we do as educators is to encourage students to grow and be better. The article observes that “employees who effectively solicit feedback from management, and implement that criticism wisely, inevitably end up becoming the top performers in their fields.” Don’t we want this for all of our students?

Students will be hesitant initially. They are not used to asking for feedback. I’ve taken the suggestions in the Fast Company piece and modified them a bit for the classroom:

  1. Ask at the appropriate time and place-we set up tutoring times. Why not make a portion of tutoring an opportunity for students to ask for feedback? Of course, many teachers also plan for time to conference during class. Part of the assignment could even be having students ask for specific feedback.
  2. Go in with a specific agenda and document the feedback-Let’s just follow the ole “I do,” “You do,” and “We do” model. Initially, the teacher can create the “agenda” through a shared document (you could even push this through Google Classroom) that models the best type of questions to ask for feedback-I do. Students complete the document to prep for the conference. Eventually, the teacher provides part of an “agenda” with a couple of items asking the student to fill out the rest of it using the models they have seen-we do. By the end of the year, the student is creating his/her own “agenda” and sharing it with the teacher ahead of time so they can fill it out together during the conference-you do.
  3. Put the feedback to work at the end of the conference, have the student create a plan of action. What will s/he do with the feedback? When can the teacher check in to see how it is going? Perhaps there is an opportunity to reflect on learning by blogging or simply sending an email to the teacher with the student briefly describing how it is going. You could even have a student FutureMe.org an email to themselves with their plan of action, and when the email arrives they reflect on how they have put the feedback to work. Make feedback an ongoing process-feedback is a part of every teacher’s classroom. It already is an ongoing process.

The greatest part is that if students become comfortable enough with this process, they could start using it with each other. Peer feedback will become stronger and more purposeful.

How might this look in a class:

During a book study, students blog about their reading and then share blogs with each other through Flipgrid.

Their video post, which also links to their blog, explains their thinking behind their blog and verbally shares their “agenda” for feedback; and Flipgrid is such a great tool because you could link to whatever you need feedback on across subjects. This idea could also work really well in Seesaw or with a Padlet.

As the teacher, I can definitely continue to comment on the learning objectives mentioned earlier. That kind of feedback is important, but I don’t want it to become so commonplace that students begin ignoring it. By allowing students to ask for the type of feedback that matters the most to them, we are helping them build skills they can take into the “real world” and it becomes meaningful to each student. Talk about personalized learning!

 

Lydia Croupe
iTeam Lead-Instructional Technology
Richardson Independent School District
Google Certified Educator⭑Seesaw Ambassador⭑
Flipgrid Ambassador⭑
Richardson, TX
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