PADLET

HELLO EVERYONE. AS I MENTIONED ON MY LAST POST, TODAY I WILL BE INTRODUCING PADLET TO YOU. AS IT WAS MY FIRST TIME USING THIS WONDERFUL APP, I HAVE HAD SOME DIFFUCULITIES. HOWEVER, IN THE END EVERYTHING TURNED OUT GREAT. SOOO, LET'S GET INTO THE APP, PADLET After signing up, this is the first page that appears. You can see your options on the top. First you can search for other padlets to see how this app works. You have to type anything you want, then the padlets about what you typed will appear. 

Then as you can see, it has 3 options ( im not counting the "app" since it is to download and nothing else and the "upgrade" option as it is to upgrade your padlet account)

First, you can make your own padlets, second option is joining a padlet and lastly, you can go to the gallery. 

First things first, i will explain the first opion "make". I will also my first attemp to make padlet and some of the padlets i have made.

 When you open the mak

e option, you will see a blank page and a "plus" sign on the right bottom of the page. When you click, a blank note page will appear and you will have options to write on it. (e.g the one that says hello) you can write, use photos, videos, links or even draw your own (look at the mess i made with hearts). Then you are done. However, these are not the only options of making a padlet.

                                                                                                        

So, there is a settings sign on the right top of the page when you click that, you will see this page named "modify" You can make your own title, use a icon to appear on the top, you can choose background, you can choose the authority. For all the padlets I made, I chose the option where the page is private and changes are not allowed yet the people you shared it with can see the page and give reactions.  Some of the other options let readers also make changes on the page. 

This is the reactions page. You can choose the reactions for your readers (students) so that they will be able to involve. As you can see, I chose the vote option now let me explain to you what it is after mentioning other options. If you select none, then no one will be able to give a reaction whether it's a dislike, star or grade. They wil be only reading what ypu posted on your padlet. When selected, star lets students give a point from 1 to 5 for your post. Grade is another option for students to give a score from 1 to 100 on your posts. Lastly, vote allows readers to like or dislike the posts. I will get into those details later on my post.

 

So after making your own padlets, you can go to the gallery. When you click gallery, you will see this page. You are free to choose a padlet to read. I chose the third one about food chains and this was the page. I rated the food chains for their burgers for some fun. But I was able to see how rating option could work on padlet. 

The third option when you go to your padlet is, joining a padlet that was already made. You can either use a url link or qr code to join a padlet. But I could not try this option because of not having any links to join. You can see how to join a padlet here.

Now you have an idea about padlet but what I want to focus on is how to use it for you lessons. The first padlet I made for a lesson was about jobs and descriptions. Imagine you are a teacher for 4th graders. Your subject is jobs. You can make a padlet with jobs descriptions and ask your students to find the mae of the jobs. 

For example this was my attempt on making such an activity.

Another padlet I made focused on students choices. If students could choose what to do on the next lesson, they would feel happier and more comfortable. As a teacher, student's well being and their opions on the learning environment msut come first. Because it is only when they love what they are doing that they can learn. So I decided to make a padlet about students choices. I listed three different activities/games focusing on different parts of the language for my students to choose. On my first post I explained them how to choose an activity. I put the "vote" option from reactions for students to either like or dislike the given game/activity. I made myself clear by not only putting an explanation but also putting pictures to be more descriptive of what they will be doing. You can see the dislikes and likes on the posts as well.

 

Such activities make students feel like they are not only part of the learning process. But also they are involved in the whole process. So, I thought apps like padlet could let us know about the opinions of our students. I also believe such apps makes students feel more comfortable and this helps thie learning process. Before writing  a whole essay on this topic, I should leave it here. I hope you can find other ways to entertain and involve your students with padlet. Take care.