Last week, new elementary teachers attended a writing professional development day with Matt Glover as part of an ongoing residency within ISD. As with most professional development days, important learning occurred, as well as conversations about how this learning could be extended. How can we build on our experiences in meaningful ways, even between professional development sessions? What are strategies for sharing successes and working through ongoing confusions together?
Luckily, there are tools that as teachers, you can access to assist with this. Many teachers are using Flipgrid with their students, but did you also know that it can also be used as a professional collaboration tool?
Using Flipgrid to Connect with Colleagues
Flipgrid is a video discussion platform that can be used to share videos with one another. Through Flipgrid, you can showcase student work, pose questions for students or colleagues to respond to, and build community in your classroom or school. While there are many ways to collaborate professionally, Flipgrid not only allows you to upload videos instantaneously, it also allows others to respond to your videos and extend the discussion. As a bonus, if you plan to use Flipgrid with your students, using it first with colleagues is a nice way to become more comfortable with the features before rolling it out with students.
What Can You Upload to Flipgrid?
After attending the Matt Glover training this week, a couple ideas came to mind about how Flipgrid might a useful tool to extend learning, share with colleagues, and continue the conversations:
- Film and upload an individual writing conference
- Upload a sample of student writing. Your colleagues could comment on next steps/follow-up teaching with the student
- Share conferring notes or samples from your “writing toolkit” with audio narration – compare formats and consider what works best for you and your students
To get started using Flipgrid as a professional tool, you can simply create an account and share your Flipgrid “code” with your colleagues via email. Ask your instructional tech TOSA if you have questions!
Check out these Flipgrid Ideas.
There’s also a Flipgrid course on Kyte.
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