Technology Thursday: Flipgrid

A little background: Our school set up an optional book club for The Innovator's Mindset. And of course, at the word book club, I was there!  At meetings we discuss the book for about 15 minute and then have another 20-30 minutes to learn about innovative ideas in teaching. At our last meeting, we were able to get some ideas about some cool websites, etc. students could use to get in some "tech" time but also give our students more voice in the classroom. During this session, we were introduced to Flipgrid and the basics of how it worked. It seemed pretty awesome but I didn't have a lot of time to investigate.

Thankfully, I work with a lot of fantastic risk takers! My wingmate and fellow 5th grade teacher, Miss Burlew, got it set up and tested it out with her class. Then she shared the videos! I was so amazed with what students had to say about their book club novels in 1 minute and 30 seconds or less! I knew I had to get my Flipgrid account set up ASAP! Setting up the account is SUPER easy and literally took less than 10 minutes -- maybe closer to 20 if you want a cool customer header like me.

I can then post my personalized link to my Google classroom or my Schoology page for my students to access. Students click the link and they are are instantly part of my class! So easily. There is an option to add a class password but since I'm not sharing my link, I currently don't see a need to add one more password to my fifth graders' lives.

This week, instead of having students write out a reading response, I'm going to have them answer some of the questions using Flipgrid! Language Arts Teachers, this also helps meet and document those speaking and listening standards!

What is Flipgrid?

It's a website that allows students to record short videos in response to a question or topic. It reminds of a video version of Padlet in the way it looks and is set up. It's also super user friendly and there is a free version (that's not a trial) for teachers to use.

Currently, I'm testing out the free version, although I think the upgrade may be worth it to use the entire school year. Students easily click the link of the topic they want to respond too and click a big green plus sign and start recording! It's so easily! It counts them down and shows them how much time they have left on their video. If they like it, they can publish it to the Flipgrid board - if they don't like it, they can redo it as many times as they need too! Then students can like and watch each other's videos - I disabled sharing and since I don't have the upgraded account students can't leave comments and I can't leave feedback.

The set up is so teacher friendly! 

Here's what my page looks like when my students go to my Flipgrid website. The homepage is a hub of all the topics/questions the teacher has posted for students to answer. Currently, I only have two topics.

The questions are below. There is a word limit so directions and questions need to be creative. I also gave my student a handout with the questions restated so that they could write a quite script. I also noticed I had left out the word "book" from Book Club so I had to do some creative editing! Mistakes happen and editing is also easy peasy! 

When students are ready to reply to a topic they click the big green plus sign and they're ready to go! It'll give them a 3-2-1 countdown and set 1 minute and 30 seconds on the clock. If you pay for the upgrade you can adjust the time limits you give your students. So far, 1 minute and 30 seconds has been plenty of time for this quick reading response.

Teachers see the number of responses, time spent recording, topics created, and an activity line graph. Pretty cool data when you log in. It really gives me a snapshot of who's been online now that students are starting to post their reading response videos.

I'm working on a feedback form so that students can watch others' videos and give some feedback to each other. I'm hoping this will also help give my students some more practice thinking and discussing their book club novels. Flipgrid is an easy (and free) way to empower your students and let them share their thinking with the class!

How do you honor #studentvoice in your classroom?

Five Favorite Tech Takeaways

On this Friday night after a whirl-wind two days of technology learning at OETC (Ohio Educators' Technology Conference) this week, I'm decompressing and thinking of some of my favorite takeaways from the conference. While not every session was A-MAZING, there were so many really cool tips and tricks I picked up from attending. I definitely left knowing so much more than I did on Wednesday morning when I arrived. I also feel really excited to learn more and share my learning with my students and colleagues. Thankful that my district invited me to come along and get my "tech" on.

Here are my favorite {and easy to implement} five... 

Ever want to print or have students read an article online but there is too much garbage on the page?Do you find yourself trying to copy and paste the article in Goolge Docs only to have the formatting turn into a total nightmare!? Don't distress. The Chrome extension Read with MagicScroll  takes away the distracting clutter (ads, links, etc.) and gives students a clean reading page that looks like an e-book! Bonus: the font size can also be adjusted! This was a new extension for me and as I've been playing around with it on my personal Chromebook. There may be a few formatting issues when converted but it makes reading websites and articles so much easier! There is also a cool percentage tracker for kids at the bottom of the converted webpage.

I think most teachers have seen word clouds used in various ways before. However, as a Text Complexity session the website WordSift.org was brought up as a way to quickly and visually check a text's vocabulary and complexity. It was really cool to see a potential article or reading piece as a word cloud. The site is super simple to use too. Just copy and paste a text into the box and with a single click... a word cloud appears! Below is a sample word cloud from Kids Discover Magazine online.

After listening to teacher Andrew Moore (@think_moore) present on the Added Value of Technology, I was feeling inspired to get my kids thinking and presenting in new and innovative ways that fit their learning styles and needs. I've included a link to his presentation because he has lots of great practical examples of how you can change up your assessment of standards and offer choice. Reading teachers especially know and love the word CHOICE as we know it empowers student readers, but we can also offer choice in how students are demonstrating knowledge of books and ELA standards. 

Yes, there are times when students need to do those writing about reading activities but if we're assessing if students can compare and contrast themes across novels could they not make a YouTube video? Sing a song? Create a comic? Create a Google Drawing? You get the point. There are NUMEROUS ways for students to demonstrate and prove their understanding. I know I'm usually good about offering choice of resources but sometimes forget about the choice in presentation. He also reminded me that although technology is amazing, we do need balance in our classrooms. We should only be using tech when it adds value to our students learning or our instruction. 

Have kids that struggle to stay focused while on a Chromebook or device? Or during a long writing assignment? A fabulous extension to Chrome called Move It is the solution! I've been using Move It the past two days on my personal Chromebook and I'm digging it! You set up how often you would like a "Move It" break under the settings (I had every 15 minutes) and the app will flash on the screen and give you a movement. 

Today, I had to march in place ten times and roll my shoulders during a thirty minute period. See below for an example of a Move It suggestion. 

The best presenter, hands down, that I heard over the two days was Google Trainer Eric Curts! He offered up so many easily ways to add great Google tools into your classroom. He presented a session titled Beyond the Slideshow (great ways to get kids thinking outside the slideshow!) and another session on Google Tools for Struggling Students. He's also on twitter and you can follow him at @EricCurts and he has a wonderful and up-to-date blog Control Alt Achieve full of lots of tech ideas! Definitely check him out and follow - ASAP!

Hope you can use one of my tech takeaways! 

Tried it Tuesday: Scholastic Book Fair App

I've been absent for a while but I'm back with a Tried it Tuesday! Thanks once again for the wonderful Holly at Fourth Grade Flipper for hosting! If you follow me on Instagram I posted about this amazing app a few weeks ago... but I never actually got around to blogging about it! Plus, it's a great app to have in the classroom and to tell your students about!

Do you have the Scholastic Book Fair app? If not, you  need to download it! It's a free app that allows students to scan the cover OR barcode of a book to learn more about it. It pulls in reading levels, short summaries, videos, etc. about the book with one scan!

Here's the app:

Here's the menu of options:

Here's a screen shot of Matched after a cover scan:

This app was handy at book fair when students were trying to find their "Just Right" level. We scanned the books and {presto!} there was the information! Students were also able to create wishlists if they had their own device. This book would also be great at a book store, library, etc. It's a super fast way to check reading level and get a quick summary. Some books also have video reviews or trailers!  There were a few books that our reader didn't' find but overall I was really happy with the app and my 5th graders gave it a thumbs up!

Happy Scanning!