Padlet : A way to interact and collaborate

What is Padlet?

A shared board designed to help teachers create tasks that allow for sharing, presentation and collaboration. Teachers can enable comments and ratings, students can add "hearts", "stars" and comment give each other feedback.

The new features include many new types of boards, check out the types here:

Wall: Brick-like layout for student notes.  

Canvas: A mind-map. This option is great if you wand students to add information to your Padlet from research they have done and make the proper connections by drawing lines from one term to another. 

Stream: Looks like a news feed, each student adds information and the order of it is top to bottom. 

Grid: A regular, well organized pinboard, organized in rows. 

Shelf: This is great if you want to have students add notes to certain categories. The teacher can add categories and students add post-it notes under a specific category of their choice.

Backchannel: This board looks like a chat, it makes things a bit more complicated to add pictures or a few sentences, so it's best for short-text notes only.

Map: Students decide "where" around the world they want to add a pin.

Here are some instructions for the task called: "Introduce yourself through a place around the world", click here.  

Timeline: This is wonderful if you are learning about people in history and you want students to add information together along a timeline. 

Here are the options students have as they add notes:

Here are some activity ideas:

Voice: Students add voice recordings, this helps if you want them to practice speaking, for example: talking about their favorite pet.

Film: Capture a video from camera: Students can show their favorite item at home and talk about it.

Screen: This requires students to download a chrome extension (so less recommended).

File: Students add a word document with a writing piece. Students read each other's compositions and give feedback to each other. (The teacher will need to enable comments in the settings). 

Draw: students draw something and add written information about it, for example: a shape, an object, a feeling- something that symbolizes what friendship means to you, then they elaborate.  

Here is the video tutorial if this is your first time opening a Padlet account: 

I hope this gives you more ideas!

Yours, 

Hili Zavaro

Tags: English, EFL, ESL, technology, distance learning.