In this video I’m going to show you how to use a program called Padlet for remote
teaching. Padlet is an interactive online bulletin board where students can post an
array of different types of content and then see what their classmates are doing in real
time. Padlet is one of the main tools that I use to help facilitate students sharing
their ideas and their work with each other rather than just with me, their teacher. When
teaching remotely, it's going to be even more important to create opportunities for students
to feel like they're still part of a community, even if that's only existing in a digital
space. My name is Sam Kary and this is my YouTube channel for The New EdTech Classroom.
As always if you appreciate the tips that I share in this video you can show your support
by hitting the like button, sharing it with other teachers that you know, and subscribing
to my channel and hitting the notification bell to make sure you don't miss any of my
weekly updates. Although Padlet is a very easy program to use, it's actually incredibly
dynamic. Students cannot only share typed answers, they can also upload just about any
type of file, whether that's video, audio, or images. They can even post screencasts
and drawings to Padlet, and as a teacher you can fully customize the settings to best fit
your class’s needs. Now let's jump in and take a closer look at Padlet. Padlet offers
a basic version and a Pro version. The difference between the two is the number of bulletin
boards that you can have running at one time, as well as the overall storage space. I've
been using Padlet Basic for years and I think it's totally okay to just use the free version.
To get started you're going to click on ‘Make a Padlet.’ Then you'll be given some options
for how you want to format your Padlet. I'm sure the other choices are great, but for
my purposes I always use either the wall, the grid, or the shelf. I use the wall most
often, so I'm going to go ahead and set up a Padlet wall. Now that we’re in Padlet,
let's take a look at how you can set it up and customize it to best fit you and your
students’ needs. First you're going to want to give your Padlet a name. And next you can
write a more detailed description about what your bulletin board is about. Then you'll
see that you can customize the wallpaper, which is essentially the background of your
bulletin board. You could make the background a solid color, you could make it a gradient
color, my personal favorite is to pick from one of the textures and patterns, and lastly
you can set a picture as the background. Here you can choose from one of the pictures that's
already in Padlet or you can upload your own. Next you'll see that the default setting is
for post attribution to be turned off. I do like to have my students sign in to create
free Padlet accounts and then have their name included, so I'm able to see who posted, so
I almost always turn post attribution on. Next you'll see that you're given the option
to turn on comments. In my opinion one of the most powerful aspects of Padlet is the
ability for students to communicate with each other about the work that they're sharing,
so I also usually turn comments on. Next you'll see that you also have the option to allow
students to give each other different types of reactions. If you turn on reactions, students
will be able to do things like like each other's posts. Whenever I've had reactions turned
on, it turns a little bit too competitive and students tend to focus a lot on how many
likes they got, so I usually keep this function turned off. And then the last setting that
I personally like to turn on is to require approval before something gets posted to Padlet.
I’ll show you what this looks like a little bit later in the video, but basically after
a student posts, it's not going to show up for the rest of the class to see until the
teacher approves that post. The obvious benefit of doing this is you have greater control
over what shows up on your bulletin board, but the downside is that if you're not monitoring
Padlet and approving posts quite regularly, it loses some of its functionality since a
big part of the benefit of using Padlet is for students to be able to see each other's
responses in real time. When you're done setting up your Padlet, click ‘Next,’ and then
to get started, click ‘Start posting.’ If you ever need to access the settings menu
again, all you need to do is click on the settings icon at the top and you can go back
in and change anything that you need to. In order to create a new post, click on the add
button on the bottom right-hand side of the screen. Here you'll see your post pop up on
the bulletin board and you can start by writing a title for your post. Below you'll see all
the different options for the types of posts that you can make. Of course one very common
way to use Padlet is to have students type a quick answer to a question. If I'm using
Padlet to have students showcase work that they created in another program, they can
do that by uploading a file that they've downloaded onto their computer and adding it to Padlet.
And now that I've added this graphic design that I created, I’ll also write a short
description explaining what it is. Next you'll see that students also have the option to
include a link to another website. This could be useful for a research project if you want
to have students collaboratively look for different sources and then share them on Padlet
for the rest of the class to see. Next if you click on the search icon, you'll see a
search box pop up where students can look for different types of media that they might
include in their post. First students would enter a search term and then they could look
for images, videos, GIFs, audio, or another website. I love including GIFs on Padlet or
on my Google Slides just to infuse a little bit of humor and fun into my lessons, so here
I'm just going to search for the term “excited” and then when I add that to my Padlet, you'll
see the GIF show up on the bulletin board. Encouraging students to add GIFs can be a
great way to supplement a text-based answer that they provide and make it a little bit
more exciting and engaging for your students. Next there's also a camera option, so here
students would be able to take a picture using their webcam and then upload that image to
Padlet. Having students take pictures could be a great community building tool. You might
have students do things like take pictures of their favorite objects or of their pets
and then upload those to the bulletin board for the rest of their classmates to see. Next
in the drop-down menu you'll see that there are even more options of different types of
files that could be included on the bulletin board. In addition to images, students could
also capture video through their webcam and upload it to Padlet. You could also have students
record audio files. So if you were interested in doing something like a class podcast or
students were sharing about their experiences, but you didn't want to go through the whole
process of actually creating a podcast, you could emulate that experience by having students
post short audio files about a personal experience that they're having with remote learning.
Or they could even do a quick interview with a family member and then add that audio file.
Another amazing feature of Padlet is that it also has a built-in screencast feature
so that students could capture what they're doing on their own computer screen and then
upload it to their Padlet. This would be a really quick and easy way to solve problems
that students are having with some of their technology at home. They could just take a
quick screen capture of the problem that they're having so that you could help them solve their
issue. Similarly if you were noticing that something was happening in the middle of the
week and wanted to post a quick tutorial for the rest of your class to see, you could also
do that by creating a screencast and then posting it to Padlet. And then the last feature
I want to talk about is the draw function, which allows students to draw something and
then post it. Here you could have students visualize something that they're learning
or if you teach math they could show the different steps to a math problem. I do like to leave
my own teacher created example on the Padlet so students have an idea of what they would
be doing for that assignment. It'll be particularly important to include an example if you want
students to use one of the media types, like a screencast, that they might not be as familiar
with. Once you're ready to share that Padlet with your class, click on ‘Share.’ I would
suggest that you either copy the link, email the link, or just post the Padlet directly
to Google Classroom. I usually choose to copy the link and then embed that link into another
assignment that I’ve created, so I'm going to go ahead and click ‘Copy Link’ here.
All right so now let's look at what this assignment looks like on the student end. First you'll
notice that if a student clicked on the link that I gave them, they can still access the
Padlet and also post to it without even signing up for an account. As I mentioned before I
do like to have my students sign up so that their name shows up on all the posts that
they put on Padlet. To do that students click on ‘Sign up,’ choose the email address
to create their account with, select ‘Basic Plan,’ and then they have an account. Just
like the post I created, students will click on the add button to add their own post. So
here you can see that my demo student is uploading a video file that they created instead of
the graphic file that I showed. You'll notice that it says right below the post that it
still requires approval. That means that that post is not going to show up on the class
Padlet until the teacher actually approves it. And here you'll see that the student is
able to comment on the post that I put up. Back on the teacher page, I can now see the
post that my demo student made, and when I click ‘Approve,’ that post will be visible
for everyone in the class to see. And now that my student has posted, I can also leave
them a comment. The last thing that I'm going to show you in this video is how to use a
shelf bulletin board. You'll see that the process of doing the initial setup with this
Padlet is identical to the other one, but once it’s created, instead of just making
a post, you're going to set up different columns. One of the ways you can do this is by creating
a KWL chart for your students, so that one column would be what some already know about
a topic. Then to create the next column, click ‘Add Column’ and here I’ll ask my students
to write what they want to know. And then once this particular lesson or unit is over,
we can return back to the Padlet and I can add a new column for students to write what
they've learned in this unit. I hope you’ve learned in this video how easy it is to use
Padlet, but also how dynamic and transformative Padlet can be. If you have any questions about
how I've used Padlet with my students, whether in the classroom or during remote teaching,
please ask in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching my video to the end.
If you found the tips that I shared helpful, please share with other teachers that you
know, hit the like button, and subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell to
make sure you don't miss any of my weekly updates. You can also check out some of the
other tutorials I have on my channel by clicking on one of those two videos above and if you're
interested in downloading any of the resources that I've created and show on my videos please
visit my website at www.new edtechclassroom.com. Lastly if you want to check me out on social
media, my Twitter handle, Facebook page, and Pinterest account are all in the description
below. Thanks so much and have a great week!