This week, I had challenges trying to leave private feedback for my students in Flipgrid and Seesaw, specifically students’ drafts in the latter. I am thankful to the various groups, boards, and twitter feeds that I follow because I was able to find solutions. With that said, I did need to research these solutions as I discovered that the answers were ones that were not as intuitive as I had thought.
Leaving Private Feedback in Flipgrid
Flipgrid is an amazing, free video student expression and learning tool. It works in all formats of teaching from remote, hybrid, and face to face (f2f). The one question that has been asked when I give a webinar about Flipgrid is how to leave private feedback to a student so that the other students will not see it.
In the admin view (admin.flipgrid.com), when you leave a comment that everyone can see and respond to, you would click on the red “Add a Comment” button that is below the video.
In Flipgrid, you create a group for your students to join. An example would be a group like 4J Music Class. In this group, the students login or join through a link, depending on whether they have Gmail or Microsoft emails or not. I take the link Flipgrid creates and leave it in their Google Classroom. When they click on it, it takes them to the topic. For the example above, it was about Chrome Music Lab Kandinsky Art with music. Sarah, my daughter, created and reflected on her music, and I left a video comment that all in the group could see.
However, if I wanted to leave a private comment or video, I would do something different.
I would click the “Feedback” tab under the video on my admin page of admin.flipgrid.com. From there, I can record a private comment, grade it with the rubric I made or the one Flipgrid defaults to, leave private feedback comment, and then send it to her via a link or email.
Can she find the private feedback in Flipgrid without me having to email it or send a link?
Yes! If the students login to my.flipgrid.com, and then login with their email addresses, they can view their private feedback, as well as all of the videos that they have made for various groups and topics. Here is a screenshot of Sarah’s videos and you can see where it is listed that she has private feedback.
Tip: From Flipgrid’s Help Page: “If students don’t have email and are using a Student Username to join the Topic, educators will need to use the Copy Feedback Link and share this with students via email, LMS communications, or any other platform to communicate with students.”
Leaving Feedback on Students’ Drafts in Seesaw
The paid version of Seesaw has a great feature that allows you to assign an activity to the students, they work on it and send it back to you, and then you can send it back to them as a draft to work further on it before approving it to their journals for their families to see. This is wonderful as it leaves the journal to showcase their featured works and leaves the learning and progress in the backend. With that said, I do feel that there are times where it is very important to show the progress and process of learning, so you and the student should choose what would work best to highlight in their journals for their families and caregivers to see.
Recently, I discovered that when I send work back as a draft to my daughter, and I leave a comment in the comment section, she does not see it on her draft. I researched this greatly to find out that some users have had the same experience. Below, the video shows how I assign an activity, Sarah performs it and turns it in, I comment and send it back as a draft, and she receives it with no comment on the screen.
If you have experienced the situation where you send feedback and the students send back the same items, here are the workarounds:
- Teach the students to look at the notifications. The notifications show the feedback and the students need to be taught that they have to look there first before opening up the draft.
- Teach the students to click the gray bar next to the “Finish Response” button and then click on their name. This will make their draft show up with the teacher’s comment. They then click the orange “Edit” button to edit their work.
- Use the microphone or text tool to leave feedback in the student’s work. If you are leaving a short note, the text tool will work. If you are leaving a longer explanation, the mic tool will be a more effective and efficient tool.
- Tip: You can use the “” tool to leave a comment, but it will not appear automatically on the screen. The student has to be told to click on “” or notice that there is a thin blue lining surrounding the “” tool that shows that there is a comment there.
New Announcements!
My book, Using Technology with Elementary Music Approaches is out! This book gives you lessons and ideas, tools, resources, and a supplemental website so you can integrate technology into the approaches of Dr. Feierabend’s First Steps in Music, Kodály, Orff Schulwerk, and Project-Based Learning (PBL). The overviews of each were written by Dr. Missy Strong (Dr. Feierabend’s First Steps), Glennis Patterson (Kodály), Ardith Collins (Orff Schulwerk), and Project-Based Learning (Amy Burns and Cherie Herring). The lessons were written by me and the supplemental website is continuously updated so that the book stays current in these changing times.
Thursday MusTech Live! is coming back! Stay tuned as the Thursday night, 8pm EDT live music tech and education chats are returning. They will focus on elementary music technology until my colleagues can return. I hope that you will join me soon on Thursdays at 8pm EDT, or catch the recording on our Facebook channel or my YouTube channel.
