FlipgridForFE

 We have been running a series of tweets recently under the hashtag #FlipgridForFE. We have had many requests recently either via our one to one sessions or group sessions of "what's the best way to do..." "how can I get students to do..." and most of the time our answer is Flipgrid.

Teachers are working at an enormous rate to make lessons as great as they can make them. You wouldn't be hanging around working all these hours in these ever changing conditions were it not for the love of the job at the minute! Teachers want to replicate their face to face classroom online, but this may not be possible nor the best idea depending on the group. Thinking about Puentedura's SAMR model we can place our activities against this framework and see are we substituting or is it better to augment the planned task online? 

Thinking about the key 21st Century 4C Digital Skills; communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking our SHED resources serve as a great tool for developing those skills. Sketching the problem creatively, critically highlighting key information, estimate a sensible answer using critical thinking. Followed by collaboratively communicating in a discussion to establish whose sensible estimates were correct. Flipgrid serves as a great tool for collaborative communication. Although students record videos individually whilst in lockdown they can collaborate by using comments, helping respond and reply to others ideas.

Flipgrid has a great mirror flip feature. This means that if you have a homemade visualiser (all my iterations here) you can record a model answer on Flipgrid. You can create a topic where you ask key questions, upload a video of your model answer and invite students to share theirs. Hattie  talks about modelling by a competent teacher having a positive impact on student learning. In this period of online teaching we can often feel far away when trying to scaffold and support, modelling is a great tool to support these aims. Flipgrid allows you to model with the old pen and paper where needed with the mirror flip too. The physical distance of student and teacher can be narrowed via Flipgrid when students talk as they write or show their work. Explaining why they did what they did may help you assess their level of skill greater than reading their written work as well as building connections between you both.

Flipgrid is great for giving feedback for students too. Anecdotally on social media we are seeing teachers herald the speed of their assessment and feedback with the use of video or audio tools. Recording a 30 second video of feedback is probably quicker than typing against a mark scheme, and more enjoyable! Video feedback builds social connection with learners, closing that physical distance bringing teachers closer to students. Students feel connected and the personalised nature of feedback

When setting topics on Flipgrid you can add in a custom rubric. This means that you can mark student video submission with a few clicks against your assessment criteria. They can also see the rubric as they submit the video. They old argument, how do students know what good looks like if they don't have a reference point! Both through model answers and the criteria they are being assessed against. Hattie says "The most powerful single influence enhancing achievement is feedback" Once students have flipped on the Flipgrid you can privately mark their work either through comments or a video response. Making feedback personal via video  may help those messages form in the student longer term memory too. 

We have blogged about using Flipgrid for staff reflection here but thinking about the new lockdown the issues still arise of staff isolation and staff lack of community. Staff may be missing that drop in to the staffroom to share how their lesson went, that offloading of class 1 on Monday morning who always put them through the wringer! Flipgrid could be a vehicle to support staff with this. Leaders could create a Flipgrid for staff communication could be powerful to help staff feel supported. A short video sharing how their foray into using a new tool could inspire another staff member who views it to give it a go. A positive comment underneath from a colleague saying I hear you and I am here for you may go a long way.

These are a few of our VERY long list of ways we encourage staff to use Flipgrid and the evidence that informs our thinking. If we can help you or your school or college with Flipgrid or any part of education technology please get in touch.

using Flipgrid to reflect

I'm a huge fan of reflective practise. We learn so much from observing and reflecting on what we taught. I've recently subjected myself to videos of me teaching online. Let's not pretend it's an enjoyable experience but it is one that creates an environment to help us learn and grow. Hattie says that the most effective teachers are the most reflective. I think we all know the importance of reflecting. 

Recently I was asked, how do I reflect? I was in a group of FE practioners and I was curious to others responses. One said she calls someone at the end of her day and debriefs. One said she answers the OTLA sheet of questions she has to complete and then it came to me. How do I reflect? Face to face teacher version 

1.0 of me reflected by talking in the office after a lesson, maybe sharing what didn't land right and a colleague passing a resource they were using that was more successful. Teaching online version of me 2.0? I watch the video and cringe, but then how can I take action?

We are missing that collaboration, that informal connection that supports our practise. I wonder what value we have missed by not having those opportunities? Just like we are working hard to create online supportive environments for our students, we should be placing the same amount of emphasis for staff. How can we create spaces for staff to thrive rather than survive when teaching online?

One large factor is time. Time to reflect, time to think. In FE we are often so very short of time already it is hard to picture opportunities to carve out more time. I heard from a college this week that due to under recruiting (genuinely no one's fault!) all staff had to increase teaching hours or provide cover in traditional PPA time. The value on staff developing their practise has been valued at a low level in this example. If a colleague reached out and said they wanted to talk about their practise, would you have the time to listen? Would they have the time to speak?

Time is precious. We can't make more of it. We need to maximise the value of the important stuff and minimise the noise. In a radical thought this week I wrote down all the things that I do that someone who was less qualified and paid less than me could do vs all the tasks it needed to be actually me there to do them. There was so much I think I could make a case for a PA! But how true is this across all our roles? How often do we undertake roles because it is easier for us to do them?

So when do we have time to reflect? When we became teachers, however our route into teaching looked, we were encouraged to reflect. Write down our evaluations. Compare those with our mentors or our observers. Develop action plans to improve our practise. A sort of Gibbs model for reflection. Now we are learning how to adapt our craft in new ways. We could probably do with another view on how it's going? But we may not have time!

If you, like me, have videoed yourself teaching, perhaps consider uploading them to a Flipgrid. Flipgrid is a wonderful tool that if it is unfamiliar I do encourage you to check it out. I'm a huge fan of right tool, right job, and although I am proud to be the first female goodle coach in EMEA and one of 78 globally for Google Innovator in 2020 this Microsoft tool is the right tool for many jobs. Flipgrid is a space for you to create a noticeboard of videos posted by others that you inspire with your topic creation. In teaching I use it to get students to talk through their working out on paper. The bit that I greatly miss in teaching online! We use it for staff birthday cards and there is some competition now as to who makes the best video for Flipgrid!

For teaching reflections though it is a great tool. I upload a video of my lesson. Generally the recording from Google Meet but this could be from Zoom or Teams or whatever you use. I can then insert timestamps of key parts where I want to make notes or ask for others opinions. Perhaps I want some new ideas for how to do starter activities as mine felt a little flat? Maybe I'm happy with my questioning and want someone to check they agree? Or I might be amazing at differentiation and have been asked by a peer to share my good practise. Observers can join the Flipgrid via a link, a code, restricted to domain or public. You are in control. I get that fear that your ventures into online teaching may not be ready to be viewed by the world. Mine aren't either! Mine are locked down to only those that I share the flipgrid with can view! 

I choose to share with different people depending on what I am looking for. I might share with peers if it is subject specific content I want help with. I might share with the TLA team if it is more broad areas I want help with. Sometimes though I like to share just to check I'm on the right track and I share with that trusted colleague who will be kind, specific and helpful in their feedback. It can be a lonely place teaching online and I'm finding lots of ways to oversome that by using Flipgrid. Observers can record video feedback for me. Their freshest thinking. They can skip to my timestamped section. I can hear their initial thoughts. Text comments are also a feature. I can read a summary evaluation. I quite like seeing a written summary, perhaps with reference to a resource that might help me next time round or some extra reading. 

This tool has wider reach and power though as a TLA tool. Perhaps we could form peer TLA groups where we all share via a Flipgrid and comment on each others teaching? The time it takes to upload a video is seconds. The video is created via the online meeting software I have taught my learners via so that takes little effort too. To watch another's video will take time, 10 minutes. To comment and leave a reply, probably 2-5 minutes. With time being so tight I'm hopeful we could find 15 minutes to reflect on our practise. But I'm more inclined to suggest that we should make time to reflect on our own practise. 

If you want to know more about how we, at Driving Digital, can help you with supporting reflective practise culture at your institution please get in touch. 

The Importance of Staying Connected

First off queue a link to my previous post on being personal...Being personal

I wanted to dive back in as it has become more important. 

We are week 8 of lockdown. It is important to establish that remote working has been the 'norm' for 8 weeks. I got a panicked text from a friend of my parents asking for help getting into a team meeting of theirs. After an hour of multiple emails and texts we finally connected on a Google Meet. She could see me and at this point she told me that I was the first person apart from her family that she had seen for 8 weeks. I asked what was the problem in getting into her team meetings and she said that it was this part the Google Meet. So for 8 weeks her team hadn't heard from her. For 8 weeks no one at work had seen her face. Yes emails and texts had come from her but no one from work had seen her.

When sharing the Staying Connected ebook on Twitter Ebook linkwe came across a parent who asked if they could send it to their child's school. For 8 weeks their child had been dutifully submitting work but they hadn't heard from any of their teachers other than a Google Classroom post. I have a problem with both these examples on a very basic human level. How can it be that for 8 weeks no one has checked in? How can an under 16 be uncontacted for 8 weeks? If we were in an traditional school environment if we hadn't heard from a child in 8 days possibly even 8 hours we would be beginning safeguarding procedures. Why is it ok to forget these now? Is it harder to check in on students virtually? 

My parents friend was fortunate to have family that had checked in on her. This situation could have been a whole lot worse. I think there is a legitimate concern about an impending mental health crisis as we emerge from lockdown as people will have been totally isolated for so long. We know loneliness is an awful thing, yet we don't seem to be taking it seriously. Yes there are other priorities but we need to be pushing this further. Imagine had my parents friend not had any family and I was literally the first person she saw in 8 weeks? Imagine what could have happened in those 8 weeks and no one would have known, it doesn't bear thinking about.

The student who hasn't seen or heard from a teacher in 8 weeks probably isn't alone in their experience. Staff are probably trying their best pushing out work as is required and are busy ranking year 11s and year 13s. Yet I cannot forgive a lack of contact for 8 weeks. I cannot think about what could have happened in those 8 weeks. But on a different level what effort has their been from the teacher to increase motivation and engagement for 8 weeks. I am amazed this child is still handing in work. I'm not sure after 8 weeks I would be. I may have lost interest.

There are 2 parts to staying connected at this time. One is the importance of safeguarding and checking in. The other is staying connected to motivate and engage. The safeguarding part is obviously important and as we connect with learners virtually we need to still be observing surroundings. If we are now present in the learners home we need to be aware that people we weren't concerned for previously might display issues now we are in their homes. The students that leave everything at their front door and put a brave face on for college don't have that separation now and we need to be mindful more than ever of observing surroundings and cues.

Aside from all of this we need to stay connected as human beings. If a virtual classroom is a no go with your group why not do a virtual check in? Create a flipgrid asking everyone how they are? Flipgrid is great at making it easy for everyone to contribute short videos. If you're not in education or don't have flipgrid a Slides presentation can do something similar. Create a slides presentation with a slide for everyone to add their own video. A black slide with each team member or students name at the top. Ask them a question and ask them to video their reply. Each person inserts their video on their slide and then everyone is staying connected.

Staying connected to motivate and engage is important too. For 8 weeks sitting at the kitchen table doing work independently means that enthusiasm may have waned. Firstly are the tasks that are being sent engaging in their own right? Are they paper based? Could they be done via video? Do we need a written reflection on the text they have read or could they narrate their thoughts? Paper is not the virtual learners friend. Printers are no longer in every home. Shops are not easily accessible, paper may be hard to find for some. Yet video, voice and colourful Slides presentations are more enjoyable to create anyway, so who would choose paper over these activities? Lack of technology may still be a barrier but the government has vowed to step in. Likewise video and audio files can be made on a mobile phone so huge kit isn't needed. 

Once the work has been submitted giving feedback is crucial but it is also crucial that it is understood. How often have you read a text and thought there was a tone or an agenda? Giving feedback digitally can have the same effect. We need to make sure our comments are taken on board. So why are we typing them and running the risk of them being misinterpreted? Why are we not videoing our feedback to give it a more personal touch? Ok I don't like videoing myself either but it is an option! Why don't we leave a voice not on a file rather than a track changes comment? Surely that makes it more personal and means it is more likely to be understood? You are you, the way you communicate is your way. Whoever you are trying to connect with is seeking out that part of you. In using your own words and making it personal you will be staying connected. SJ