Friday, February 14, 2014

Passion for Padlet


In honor of Valentine’s Day, I want to tell you about a Web 2.0 tool my students and I absolutely love.  It is called Padlet.  To explain what it is in simple terms, I will use a quote from Padlet’s home page, “We give you a blank wall. You put anything you want on it, anywhere. Simple, yet powerful.”  Padlet has given my class a place to post our ideas digitally for a variety of purposes for all subject areas.  

I first started using Padlet as an exit slip.  I would have my students post their thoughts at the end of the lesson or for homework so I could assess understanding, encourage collaboration, and allow students to access other resources for more information to respond to my question.  We were having such success and my students wanted a new question daily.  I decided to post inquiry questions as a way to pretest for understanding before science labs or mini-lessons in Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop.  We are also a 4C’s (collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking) centered classroom, so I encouraged students to come up with their own content-related questions to post to a Padlet for our class to answer.  They would submit them via a Google Form. We also used our Padlets to collaborate with our buddy classrooms in our district and across the country. We asked for advice about poetry writing from Mrs. Barnes 7th Graders in Virginia and they posted their ideas on a Padlet for us.  Recently, my class jigsawed online nonfiction resources and explored the text structure of the websites.  They recorded their findings on Padlet



Padlet is a great professional development presentation tool for educators.  I use it to get to know my workshop participants, check for understanding, and encourage feedback.  It also gives educators attending my workshop a chance to try one of the tools I use with my students, and feel the power of this collaborative learning opportunity.  It always opens up a great discussion, and I love the buzz I hear between educators discussing the possibilities for their own professional world.

There are many features in Padlet that make it unique and exciting.  The program is very easy to use since you only have to set up a few options in order for a Padlet to be ready to use.  These are: portrait, wallpaper, title, description and privacy settings.  Padlet gives you many options for the portraits and wallpaper, but I usually use my own photo for the portrait to remind my students that the question is coming from me.  I have done this as a way to remind them that classroom rules for digital citizenship apply 24/7 and our connection with our global community comes with great responsibility.  I am happy to say that they have taken this learning opportunity very seriously and have not abused the freedom.  Here are a few more examples of Padlets my students and I have created over the last two years.   

How do you use Padlet with your students? Share your ideas and lessons.


6 comments:

  1. I share your passion for Padlet and am so glad I learned about it in your 1:1 Best Practices course. The versatility and ease of Padlet makes it one of my favorite too.

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  2. I started using this ever since our G+ Hangout, and I love it! Great tool. Thanks for recommending!

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  3. On behalf of my students from New Zealand I would like to thank you and your students for their amazing comments that have been left on their individual student blogs. For many of our students its the first time that they have received direct feedback on their work from students in another country and this is such a powerful tool for our students. They will be thrilled when we get back to class on Monday. Outstanding job.
    Mr Webb and Room One, Auroa Primary School, Auroa, New Zealand. mrwebbauora.blogspot.com

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  4. Padlet sounds like a great program! I love the idea of using it to see what the students have learned that day. It gives the teacher a blueprint of what to address the following class.

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  5. Hello,
    My name is Heather Marsh and I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I will be summarizing this blog post in my own blog for my class. I really enjoyed learning about Padlet and how you use it in your class room. I Think it will be a great tool for me to use in my own class room one day. It sounds like a good way to get students involved and excited.

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  6. I have never heard of Padlet before. It sounds like a wonderful tool to use. I love how you have your students interact and feel free to ask questions. This is definitely something I need to try.

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