All student images used with permission.
Flipgrid enables me to engage students outside the classroom in critical ways. Dialogue between students is more robust in the classroom when it begins outside the classroom. Giving them prompts on the reading helps to focus their engagement with the material and maximizes class time productivity. Requiring feedback on the grid encourages critical engagement in the material, jumpstarts peer dialogue, and gives me a better understanding of how they are grasping the reading.
VoiceThread is similar to Flipgrid in that it allows for educators to engage their students outside of the classroom. Voicethread, however, offers much more rich interaction. Students can upload and annotate content. For this assignment, I uploaded a reading assignment and had the students respond to the text in-line. I posted the prompt via video comment to reduce the chance of misunderstanding the assignment and to demonstrate ways they could use the tool. Click here or on the image to learn more about this tool and how I use it.