More than a decade ago, we teamed up with our friend Bonnie McClelland, and created Gridpals to help our Flip community meet and connect with fellow educators (and their classes) around the world. Over the years, Gridpals has enriched our community, helping Flip educators share ideas and support one another, and providing both educators and students with a deeper understanding of diverse, global perspectives.
A lot has changed since we first introduced this feature, and as time has passed and new tools have emerged to connect with one another, Gridpals has been used less frequently.
This drop in usage told us it was time to listen to the signals our community was sending us and rethink this feature to bring you a more modern, easy solution to keep your Flip community connections strong.
Moving forward, Gridpals will no longer be available in the Flip app on Web or mobile, but rest assured we are hard at work thinking about new ways to help you connect with others in the Flip educator community, and we look forward to sharing more in the near future!
In the meantime, you can experience the best of the Flip global community through one of the ways below:
- Join a Flip Event. These are 30-minute free interactive experiences, offered almost weekly to take your students on virtual explorations or meet experts from different fields. Register for upcoming events or watch on demand here: aka.ms/flipevents.
- Participate in global collaboration projects created by Flip community members like Yaritza Villalba connecting classrooms and cultures in over X countries.
- Take your class for a Virtual Field Trip. Explore amazing content from our virtual field trip providers, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, California State Parks, Yellowstone NPS, Scholastic, and more, in Flip’s Discovery Library.
And if you are looking for educators interested in classroom connections here is how to find them:
- Find Flip community members and other educators interested in global connections through your social media channels or your #PLN. Simply, put out your request on Twitter using @MicrosoftFlip #Flipsider. Once you find a match, contact them to discuss the next steps and add them as a co-lead in your Flip Group so you can collaborate.
- In the meantime, a great tool to connect with global Flip educators is by using Empatico. You can sign up for a free account on Empatico.org where you can find other educators with similar interests, schedules, student ages, and more. Just share your join code with the teachers you connect with and let the learning begin!
As always, we'd love to hear from you. Send us your feedback or suggestions on this feature or any other here.