Using Flipboard in Teaching

I really enjoy using Flipboard to curate articles though I must admit to being an abject failure engaging teachers in what I am curating.  I send emails to introduce Flipboard and talk about the articles but I see little evidence of them even occasionally looking at them.  I have been more successful in having educators and students outside of my school use them by posting on Twitter and a librarians’ facebook group.  Now that I have this time in Covid-19 lockdown I have decided that the moment has come to solve this problem and to show our teaching staff how useful Flipboard can be!

For those of you who haven’t encountered Flipboard yet, it is a social bookmarking site which allows you to curate articles, which appear on a page in a grid format.  


All you need to do is click on the image and you are taken to the article.  The curator is also able to write comments about the article they are ‘book marking’.

There are quite obvious uses for Flipboard.  I used to send links to teachers and administrators, relating to their subject area and/or interests.  However, as all educators know, we receive far too many emails.  When I came across Flipboard I realised that it was a way to cut down on the number of emails I was sending and that teachers were receiving.  I think that I expected teachers to sign up to follow the Flipboard relating to their subject area, but that proved not to be the case.  I need to try again to encourage them to do so.  I wonder if they have noticed yet that I haven’t been sending emails with links or did they never bother to read my emails in the first place.  Alas!  

Using Flipboard in Education

1. Curating articles for colleagues or students on a particular subject.

2. The ability to add comments about the articles would allow teachers to set a particular activity for the student to do, relating to the articles.  Teachers could ask questions, which might allow them to see how well a student understood what they had read.

3. Students could be given an assignment to curate their own set of articles on a particular topic.  As part of the curation they could be asked to comment on each of the sources they had added.  These comments might include information on the the author and their authority in writing the article; on the origin of the information the author had used (is there a WCL or bibliography); whether or not there was obvious bias.  The list could go on, depending on the aim of the assignment.  Students might also be asked to state what is compelling about the article they have chosen.

3. Each student could be asked to share their Flipboard with another student in the class.  In this way, they could make comments on each other’s sources and also find new sources they hadn’t come across yet.

4. Flipboards are another way for students to make their source lists or WCLs visible to others.  I have created an example for a grade 6 (year 7) science project on forensics.  My imaginary student has chosen to research and write about DNA Fingerprinting;  https://flipboard.com/@merrilibrarian/forensics-dna-fingerprinting-r6cdvnf6z?from=share

5. Teachers could curate their curriculum in a Flipboard magazine, with articles for students to read relating to each unit.

6. I really like this idea but it isn’t mine:  “Record a video of yourself giving out the assignment, upload it to Youtube, pull it into your Flipboard along with two or three articles pertaining to the assignment, and ask students to add two of their own, as well as commenting on two collected by other students. Ask if they can locate an appropriate content expert on twitter and pull that feed in as well. During your class discussion, ask students to converse on a Google Doc, then add that Google Doc to the magazine as well.”  (Homan)

Works Cited

Homan, Audrey. "4 Ways to Use Flipboard in your Flipped Classroom." Innovative Education in VT,     

     12 Sept. 2014, tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/4-ways-use-flipboard-flipped-classroom/. Accessed 8 June 

     2020