Five Ideas for Using Google’s New Threadit App in School

Last week Google introduced a new video recording tool called Threadit. In my weekly newsletter and on my YouTube channel I described Threadit as “Flipgrid Meets Google Docs.” While I still think that’s a good description, there is more to Threadit than that. Here’s my preliminary list of five ways that Threadit could be used in school.

Group Video Presentations

Threadit could be used by small groups of students to collaborate on a series of video presentations. Each student in a group can record his or her own short video that is then combined or “threaded” with the videos made by other students in the group.

The way that I envision this is in a history class in which each student has a topic or theme within an event. All of the videos submitted by students would serve to be a summary of the event.

Asynchronous Video Discussions

In this scenario you can post a topic of discussion for your students and they can reply with their thoughts in the form of short videos. I can see this being used for book discussions or discussions about current events.

Segmented Tutorial Videos

One of the best features of Threadit is the ability to put together a list of clips to share as one package. You can title each clip and each clip is its own video. Viewers can jump to a specific clip or watch them in the order in which you arranged them. This could be great for making in-depth tutorials to teach tech skills and or to teach a multiple step process for solving an equation.

Asynchronous Video Office Hours

Do you have a student who can’t make it to your regularly scheduled office hours? Threadit might be the solution to that problem. A student could start a Threadit thread by recording a video in which they explain the thing(s) with which they need your help. The student can then invite you as a collaborator on the thread and you can reply with your own videos.

“Feel Good” Group Messages

Is there a classmate that needs cheering up while recovering from an illness? Is a colleague retiring after 30 years of service to the school? Threadit could be used to create a series of uplifting video messages that is shared with that person after everyone has recorded his or her video message.

How to Use Threadit

Watch this video to learn about all Threadit’s features.

Learn more about making videos:

My self-paced course, A Crash Course in Making & Teaching With Video shows you everything you need to know to make effective video lessons that your students will watch.