Webwatcher: Padlet

Those of you with long memories may well remember a tool called Wallwisher. I featured it in my articles in ETp Issues 69 and 88. Its name was then changed to Padlet (see ETp Issue 97) and, over the years, it has undergone several updates. To my mind, Padlet has really stood the test of time, and the new updates have made the tool more collaborative and more flexible than ever – so much so, that I have begun using it again in my own teaching and learning.

Padlet in its basic form

In its basic form, Padlet is like an electronic corkboard where students can add comments, rather like sticky notes attached to a noticeboard. The advantage is that the notes can include video, links, pictures and text. Each individual ‘board’ is known as a ‘padlet’, and the most common use in education is for the teacher to put a question at the top of a padlet and share the link with the students. The students then open up the padlet on their own devices and contribute their ideas in response to the question. This makes Padlet a great tool for brainstorming, collecting opinions and sharing ideas.

I sometimes set my students the task of working in groups and building padlets about different cities around the world. I have also got them to create padlets about environmental pollution, their favourite English film of all time and interesting places to visit in their countries.

Padlets are very visual, so they are ideal for presentations, and for groupwork. The students can work together and collaborate on a padlet, and then present their work to the rest of the class. This works well, for example, in a flipped classroom scenario: the students can work collaboratively on their padlets for homework, and then the classroom activity can be to present their padlet to the rest of the class.

Taking Padlet to another level

Padlet has developed into quite a sophisticated tool that now offers many more possibilities than the earlier versions did. For example, the students can add their ideas and thoughts into a padlet and then, afterwards, the class can vote on the best opinion or idea. The option to vote on students’ contributions is a relatively new feature. They could upload a picture of their weekend, along with an explanation of what they did, and then the whole class could vote on the best picture, the most interesting or exciting weekend, etc.

Padlet also offers the option to comment on contributions. Again, this is a new feature that presents some interesting possibilities. The students could upload pictures of their favourite places, and the others could then comment by adding words or sentences that best describe each place.

These new features allow for much more interaction and flexibility in the way that Padlet is used.

In the new version of Padlet, it is even possible to grade other contributions. I haven’t used this feature yet, but one way I am planning to use it is when teaching introductory paragraphs in discursive essays. I could upload three different introductions of varying quality and get the students to read these introductions and then grade them. This could be a great way of building the students’ understanding of what a good introductory paragraph should contain.

There are also some interesting padlets produced by other users which are displayed in a ‘gallery’ section. By browsing through these, you can see lots of examples of how comments, grading and ‘liking’ can be used to facilitate more interaction and student-centred learning.

Here are some further ideas:

• The students are given a number of short stories describing events that either have or haven’t really happened. They have to decide if they think the stories are true or false.
• The students are provided with possible questions for Part 1 of the Cambridge First Speaking exam. They have to rate how well they think they could answer them.
• The students upload pictures they have taken; other students comment on them and rate them.

The nice thing about padlets is that the contributions are all added to one visual display. This can then be saved as an image and added to the students’ blogs or printed out and shared.

I really like the improvements that have been made to this tool, and the designers have opened up many new ways in which it can be used.

Learn Padlet

I have created two videos to help you learn how to use Padlet.

There is a full introduction to Padlet at https://youtu.be/X3Uf6pmpiG8.

There is information on the more advanced features of Padlet at https://youtu.be/gfrz_b-NQrs.