Tool Review: Padlet

My favorite part of this class, other than the blogging, is learning about the different tools available. This week I made accounts for Google Classroom, Edmodo, NowComment, and Padlet. I have already had some experience with Google Classroom and Edmodo (I prefer Google Classroom, but I am interested in trying out some more of the features on Edmodo). However, I had never heard of NowComment or Padlet. NowComment is interesting, but as a math teacher, I did not have an immediate idea of how to connect the tool with a math lesson, though I am sure it could be done.

So Padlet, I think this is a great way to make an interactive bulletin board, vision board, or a way to share resources with a group. It was easy to use; I think it would be appropriate for most students 6th grade and up. If you were to set up the board and have your students participate in it, you could control some of the content being posted, so hopefully, there would not be anything inappropriate being shared to the board.

I played around with the tool and created my own board to help myself curate a collection of resources for my move back to Hawaii in 2022. You can view it here: https://padlet.com/doodlenjodie/hawaii. If you are interested in collaborating on it, let me know! Or if you have a board you have created and want another collaborative, invite me :)

Pros: 

User friendly

Visually pleasing

Ability to moderate content

Easy collaboration

Multiple uses

(can you think of any more?)

Cons:

Costs money for more than 3 boards (not sure how many boards you can collaborate with for free, does anyone else know?)

(do you have any to add?)

There was a discussion topic this week about if educators should push for produsage in the classroom. I feel that a tool like Padlet would be a great start to introduce students to the idea of produsage, there are a lot of mini-lessons that are able to go along with it as well to help students become ethical and efficient users of technology.