Using Padlet in the classroom

Using Padlet

Padlet is a really useful collaborative programme and I've got to say I really love it for use in class. It's a great way for students to learn from each other.

The limitations are: 

- You have got to monitor students posts as they tend to get excited about the fact that they have free reign to post whatever they want. This calms down after the first few uses as they like the positive feedback.
- Trying to get students to all log onto a new programme at the same time is little like herding cats.

The Positives are:

- Students can post video's, photo's (I especially like photo's of their work), links to useful websites and any document they have on their device.
- Feedback is really easy for teacher and students to give to each other (I especially love the fact you can choose to like posts).
- It's a way to promote rewindable learning from the students.
- You can make it look really pretty really easily. Which is important to students and means they tend to engage a bit better.

How to use this in the classroom

First of all make your link easy to write down, especially if your a school using Microsoft 365, and sending out a group email is quite challenging. This will make your life so much easier and especially for students who are struggling with spelling and literacy.
Students really enjoy working as collaborators, and sharing their knowledge. Students need a place to practice commenting on others work and Padlet is a great place it allows you as a teacher to delete innapropriate comments (really easily if you download the app onto a tablet), it allows teachers to comment on posts and give a thumbs up to great comments or posts. 

I quite like padlet as an easy way for students to share their knowledge. It's easy to use and students can use it on a range of devices (it even works on ipads). For a revision tool it works quite well. I've only tried it as a way to reflect on their learning so far. I would like to use it for individual students to post every lesson and then use it as an aid to revision. If you try it let me know how it goes. It will be easier to monitor in a Google apps for education school as students and teacher can log in using their google account.

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