Flipgrid for Interpersonal Speaking... and for reaching outside of classroom walls

Have you heard of Flipgrid? Arianne Dowd recommended it to me (anything she recommends you should check out) and I tried it for the first time yesterday. It was excellent! I am so looking forward to exploring all the possibilities that can be done with it. There are probably blog posts out there about this already... but I haven't seen them yet, so I thought I would share here about this fabulous resources!

• So what is it?

• Flipgrid is a website/app that can be used for asynchronous communication. Students get a link to a teacher created "flipgrid". They enter the password and then they can post videos. Other students (or outside "visitors") can respond to those videos. (The subscription costs $65 for students to be able to respond to each other). 

• What did we do with it?
• We just finished our También la lluvia unit (unit packet) in my AP class, so in order to "discuss" the movie, all students had to post two questions and answer three or more of their classmates' questions. I emphasized that this is interpersonal, so they are just supposed to answer... not prepare notes!
• Students did an excellent job and enjoyed it!
• There were 31 questions posted and 122 responses. That is a lot of verbal exchanges!

• Why is so great?
• Interpersonal Speaking without the pressure: Flipgrid takes the pressure of off students. They were in the hallway and in the classroom speaking and listening to each other without the pressure of everyone listening to them at the same time.
• Interpersonal Speaking: It can be challenging really "do" in the classroom. Flipgrid allows for this to happen in a fun way.
• Listening: Students not only listened to the questions of their classmates, but also they listened to their classmates' responses to their questions.
• Choice: Students got to choose which questions they answer.
• Fun: Students really seemed to enjoy this activity! They especially liked taking the selfie that will be displayed for each video (see pensive selfie above).

• What else can you do with it?
• Reach outside the classroom walls! I contacted a reporter via Twitter who wrote one of the articles (Arianne translated it and it is in the unit packet) that we read during this unit and he has agreed to answer some questions from my students. This will be a fantastic and authentic interpretive listening activity for my students.
• Reach outside the classroom walls! I am repeating this because there are so many possibilities with this, especially because it is asynchronous communication.
• Obviously interpersonal speaking is much easier to do with AP students because they are top notch students with lots of language ability, but I am planning to use Flipgrid next week with my Spanish 2 students for an interpersonal speaking assessment as well. I hope to share how that goes next week.