I had the wonderful opportunity to watch some of my colleagues give a presentation on Padlet. The execution of the presentation was great. It was informative, engaging, and gave me the opportunity to try the tool and see what I can do.
Padlet is a relatively simple tool, which they illustrated beautifully in their use of a quick video to show the basics. After that they gave us all a chance to quickly dive in and get creative. I felt engaged and got excited in customizing my Padlet wall with chemistry related pictures and videos. What seemed to be a wall for sticky notes quickly transformed into so much more. I think the group did a great job in showing the range of uses of Padlet when they each created their own Padlet site, and shared it with us. I think that was the most powerful part of the presentation because they showed a variety of different ways a teacher can use it in different content areas.
In my chemistry classroom, I can imagine having a Padlet instead of a traditional website for my class. I could have a Padlet with information about myself, with a note linking to a new wall for each of the classes I teach. Withing each class "wall" I might have a note for homework, one for video resources, one for bell work. In an effort to streamline all the classroom technology resources into one place, bell work could be collected using another tool like Socrative, but other things like posting resources and homework is not something that Socrative would be useful for. A possible way to combine these too is to have a wall for assessment and bell work that link to Socrative.
As of now, I'm not 100% sure how well it would work in a classroom, however I am definitely willing to try and use it instead of a traditional teacher website since I think it's more interesting and versatile. It is also something that students would modify parts of and add to, which is empowering and hopefully would encourage them actually referring to the website and using it.
-Tahani
ReplyDeleteI also really liked the presentation on Padlet! I find it extremely interactive, which could be a cool feature in the classroom. I really liked how you thought about how you would use it in your chemistry classroom. I think it would work out well to use it as your homepage for your students. I like how you already thought about putting your technology resources into one place. I think this would be extremely helpful to students so that they don't have to go on a hunt to find everything.
I also, thought about using Padlet in my Spanish classroom because it is a new and interesting way to present information to our students. I will probably use my Padlet more for online Spanish resources, than to present homework and bellwork though. That's what is nice about Padlet, in that you can customize it how you want!
Really interesting perspective!
Tahani, I am so glad that you enjoyed our presentation! We tried really hard to think of ways that Padlet could be most useful in different disciplines, and that is why we presented each of our own Padlet sites. I love how you are already thinking about using a Padlet as your main site for your Chemistry classes. And I really like how you have thought about combining Socrative with Padlet. Furthermore, I think that the appeal of Padlet is that everyone loves stick notes, and in presenting the site the way that they do, it is visually appealing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I never thought about how empowering it could be to allow students to add to the site themselves. This is so true! I love it! Thanks for the great ideas!