Padlet: A collaborative tool in class

Hello everyone! Welcome to Elora's ICT BLOG💗

This blog will be a record of my own explorations and discoveries, I'm gonna introduce different technologies applied in English education every week. It’s a new challenge for me as a new English teacher, but I can't wait to share my learning journey with you!😆 Each of you is very welcome to leave your comments💝

copyright © pexels.com

This week our topic is collaboration. With the widespread use of online teaching, many students are realising that studying alone can be painful and inefficient. How can we collaborate through technology when we can't be in the same classroom face-to-face with teachers and classmates? Padlet is an innovative way for you!😁

How to use Padlet?

Padlet is a website that allows users to create interactive online bulletin boards. Students can post different types of content and see what their classmates are doing at the same time. It’s a very good way for students to share their ideas and work with each other rather than simple teacher-student interactions. Here is a very detailed tutorial video on how to use Padlet in your teaching👀

One of the things I really like about the Padlet is that it has a wide operating space and strong flexibility for users😀🌟You can really customize it to best fit the teaching needs. You can not only set up the appearance in great detail, such as different formats, backgrounds, colors, and fonts. You also have the option to allow students doing interact with their classmates. For example, they are able to leave comments or give reactions to other students’ posts. Padlet is a real benefit platform to let students have a sense of belonging to the community even in a digital space, you can all share your thoughts and ideas on the same discussion forums at the same time no matter where you are, which is quite useful nowadays in online teaching.

 

However, there are also some limitations...

 

Padlet is free to use, but you can only have 3 bulletin boards running at one time in the free version, if you want more you need to pay for it. The speed of uploading is also limited. And the membership is not a one-time payment, the price might be a consideration for somebody😔

screenshot from Padlet

The other point is that to some extent because the Padlet offers so many options I think it's a bit complicated in terms of functionality, which requires some time and effort on the part of the teacher to learn it, when in fact a simpler version might be perfectly adequate and too much functionality is not necessarily a good thing😰

 

But all in all, Padlet is still a very useful tool, try using it in the classroom for collaboration!😆

That's all for today, see you next week💞