#flipgridfever: New features for fall

If you are a regular user, here’s a summary of the recent enhancements that simplify management, add flexibility, connect with other platforms, inspire even greater engagement and facilitate fun.

1. You can now record and/or upload video prompts from YouTube and Vimeo or upload an image, or a GIF or an emoji to spark discussion.

2. Users can now also add links or document attachments to refer to relevant outside content.

3. Students can take the lead and recognize their impact by Sparking a student response into its very own topic.

4. Teachers may scaffold semester activities in advance by setting dates for when a topic becomes visible and when it freezes.

5. Time for responses or stories, are no longer tied to a standard 90-second limit. You may choose to challenge students to be concise with 15-second video limits or inspire more complex topic responses with the new 5-minute video limit.

6. The Teacher Admin and Dashboard areas now display a summary of your grids with student activity at-a-glance. You can quickly catch up on unviewed videos and get a sense of engagement, progress and achievement shared in data, a graph and the badges you’ve earned. 

7. It is now possible to watch videos from within the Teacher Admin area with a new QuickView feature in which you may provide feedback, watch replies, share, and navigate between videos with a single click.

8. A standard feedback rubric is now available to ALL Flipgrid educators. Classroom accounts may now create custom feedback rubrics by deciding on criteria and points.

9. Students can add titles and searchable hashtags to their video responses to promote discoverability. They can now add links and emojis to their responses and stickers and drawings to their selfies.

10. I love that students can now pause videos during a response and flip the camera to show a different perspective or to add a prop.

11. Students can also add a title or linked file to their response which can give a bit of clarification, background story, or a hook into their response.  Searchable hashtags make finding connecting responses a breeze. When students receive responses to their videos, profile pictures appear at the bottom of their own profile picture. Beyond seeing the response, this promotes the feeling of participation in a community.

12. Beyond hearting, an expanded set of emoji reactions now includes: rockets to applaud out-of-this-world ideas; a light bulb to acknowledge a bright idea; a thinking emoji to acknowledge a provocative idea. And there’s the Ambassador-requested Mic Drop!  Administrator may turn these on or off.  Imagine how these might be used by students to encourage each other.

13. For those of us who prepare little scripts in advance, a handy sticky note feature allows students and the rest of us to type script or notes to use while we record.

14. Sharing is more nuanced and flexible and there is a new private share link. Individual responses may now be shared without compromising the privacy of other comments in the class discussion–a lovely feature for connecting with parents.

15. The Flipgrid mobile app has a built-in QR reader to facilitate participation. You may now easily access grids using QR codes.

16. And there are new integrations!  According to the announcement Flipgrid’s now plays nice with: Google Classroom, Canva, Edmodo, Blackboard, Moodle, Sway, WordPress, Powerschool, Schoology, Brightspace, OneNote, and Teams.

Looking for a way to get started? How about the Back-to-School Intro Challenge?

Check out our dear friend Andy Plemmons’ Flipgrid projects at Barrow Elementary, especially this anthology of faculty and staff inspiration.

Keep up with news and ideas for sharing student voice on the Flipgrid blog.