By Benjamin Herold
Given all the changes to public education in the past year, Carinne Gale felt lucky her training to be a teacher prepared her to work online.
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced Gale’s classes at the Boston Teacher Residency to go all-remote last summer, for example, one of her instructors adapted by using a popular video-sharing platform to post recordings of herself teaching sample lessons. The teachers-in-training were expected to post their own recorded responses, then digitally comment on those of their classmates. Gale laughed when the instructor said she spent her Friday nights watching the Flipgrid videos with popcorn and a bottle of wine.
This fall, though, Gale found herself doing the same thing as a student teacher at the Dudley Street Neighborhood Charter School in Roxbury, Mass. She helped convert a traditionally teacher-centric classroom math game called “Guess My Number” into an interactive Flipgrid activity.