Padlet was chosen to showcase the work of all the participants in an online course and celebrate the students’ completion of the course. Image: Eleni Zazani, CC-BY 2.0

Padlet (formerly Wallwisher) allows you to create an online bulletin board where you and your students can add sticky-notes, comments, images, videos and links. Walls can be public or can be made private by requiring students to enter a password. Contributions to walls can also be moderated, allowing teachers to approve students’ submissions before they go public. Padlet walls can easily be embedded on websites and inside learning management systems such as Canvas.

Why we like it:

Padlet allows you to collect responses from students in a much more “playful” way than a discussion forum. It can be like a virtual pinboard for ideas. It is extremely easy to set up, and very intuitive for students. Because it supports images, links and videos, students can do research on the Internet and post their findings. Posts can be moved and rearranged as themes start to emerge.

Uses in the classroom:

• A video could be posted by a teacher and then students could post responses to the video on Padlet.
• Padlet can be used for online debates, where students post responses to a “pro” or “con” area of the bulletin board.
• Padlet can also be used for brainstorming, where students collect ideas and group ideas together.
• Padlet is also great for “icebreakers,” where students can post images of themselves, favorite foods, places they have been or hobbies.

Potential drawbacks:

Padlet does not record the names of the person posting to the wall, so it may be necessary to ask students to always include their name when they post.

 

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• January 13, 2016
• by Rob Caldwell
• bulletin board software