Tech Tip Tuesday: Padlet

Happy Tech Tip Tuesday! I hope your week is off to a great start! Mine certainly is....I'm in sunny Orlando, Florida attending the Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC). I'm super excited about all of the awesome things I'm learning and hope to come back with many great tech tips to share in the future.

Today's tip is for a fun, web-based tool called Padlet. This great tool functions as an online bulletin board that you can add text, images, videos, links or text to. You can change the look and the background, and really customize it to fit your personality or topic.

Students post their thoughts and it is visible to everyone on the Padlet. I like to use this during group discussion and project to the board so everyone can see questions and comments as they are posted. You can go back to your padlet months, days or years later to refer to what was shared.

A padlet I recently used during a PD

Padlet can also be used to:

• Activate background knowledge on a topic
• Post-assessment on what students learned about a topic
• Share resources relevant to a topic (and resources in L1 for newcomers)
• Reading/video response
• Showcase student work
• Address questions that come up without having to stop the flow of the lesson
• Keep a record of questions asked during a lesson

Why this is good for ELLs:

Incorporating Padlet automatically adds another language modality to your lesson, and provides opportunities for students at different proficiency levels to respond. Sometimes during a discussion, students with lower proficiency have trouble following along, or don't feel comfortable piping up during a discussion. Padlet can be a great tool to help them keep up with what is going on since they can see it on the screen and read at their own pace. They can also ask for clarification or add their own ideas in a lower-pressure way. 

I hope you find ways to incorporate this awesome tool into your instruction!