180 Days of Flipgrid: The Process

Goal: Record one Flipgrid reflection video each day of the school year in order to grow in my professional practice.

What does the “180 Days of Flipgrid” process look like?

• I created my own “Reflection” grid on Flipgrid. The grid is private to me, and is not shared with anyone. Within the grid, I have a “180 Days of Flipgrid” topic. I have the time limit set to the max 5 minutes.

• I use my personal gmail address to record the videos, and my school Flipgrid account to setup the grid.
• Every school day (hence the 180 of #Flipgrid180), I record a reflection video. I record at school, at home, in the (parked) car… anywhere!
• The time of day I record my reflections varies. Ideally, I would record in the moment before I forget something (and sometimes that happens). More often than not, if I don’t have the ability to record in the moment, I will jot down a quick Google Keep note to remember a thought for later. It all just depends on what’s happening that day.
• Before I post, I add a title that includes which number day I’m on and the main idea of the reflection. I try to have fun with the selfies, or upload a custom “Reflection” Flipgrid sticker from my computer. I use the selfie stickers to indicate the day of the week and an emoji to represent my feelings in the day/reflection.

  

• Each week, I create a new “Week of ___” mix tape and add that week’s five videos to the mix.

• Each Friday I review the five videos from the week using the mix tape.
• As the videos play, I record on my blog the major ideas from each video. I then boil that down into my biggest takeaway and write a short overview reflection of the week.

Hmm, writing down these steps seems like a lot… but so far, I’ve found the process easy and meaningful. Recording the videos each day is SO QUICK. It’s really become a habit, and I feel a sense of accomplishment knowing that I recorded my daily video. I wasn’t sure how the weekly written blog reflection was going to go (that is why I started doing the videos in the first place, since I didn’t like to write), but so far (3 weeks in), I’ve found that the review process is just as meaningful as the daily reflections. Hopefully I can maintain it, but it’s not about perfection, it’s about the progress and process.