Just in time for the start of the new school year Flipgrid has rolled-out new features for teachers and students. I tried them out this afternoon and plan to make a video overview of them soon. In the meantime, here’s a run-down of what’s new and why you might care about the new features.
Whiteboard in Flipgrid
Now when you launch the Flipgrid video recorder you will see a menu of drawing, sticker, and text tools on the right side of the screen. Within that menu there is a whiteboard icon. Click on it and you’ll launch a whiteboard that you can draw on while talking. You can even switch between showing your face in the video and showing the whiteboard in the video.
The whiteboard in Flipgrid could be great for creating your own explantory videos or for having students create explantory videos.
Shorts!
Teachers now have a second option for recording short introductory videos to share with students and parents. In the teacher admin panel there is now a link labeled “Shorts.” Click on Shorts to create a three minute video that you can post anywhere including any Flipgrid grid, blog post, or social media site.
Shorts includes the whiteboard tool that I mentioned above. So if you teach multiple sections of the same course, you could record one whiteboard video with Shorts and post it to multiple Flipgrid grids.
Transcription and Close-captioning
You now have the option to have all of the videos in your Flipgrid grids automatically transcribed and close-captioned. Immersive Reader, Microsoft’s program that reads webpages aloud, is now available in Flipgrid too.
It’s always a bit of a guess as to whether or automatic transcription of spoken words is going to be accurate. But it’s better than no transcription at all.
Flipgrid AR
Flipgrid AR is essentially a fancy QR code function available through Flipgrid. You can now print QR codes for any and all of your videos or your students’ videos. When scanned, those QR codes will play the videos overlaid on top of whatever is in the field of view of your phone or tablet’s camera.
Flipgrid AR could be fun to use at an open house night. It might also be useful to have students record short videos about their favorite books and then put the corresponding Flipgrid QR codes in the dust jackets or first pages of the books for others to scan and get a preview of the book.
