As many schools continue remote instruction, teachers continue to look for new and exciting platforms to encourage collaboration in the virtual classroom. One such platform is Padlet, a virtual bulletin board which enables students to collaborate anonymously with each other.
With Padlet, students post “sticky notes” to boards their teachers create. Padlet has many templates for you to engage students in a variety of ways. Some layouts display student ideas randomly with the option to organize it yourself, others present them by time of submission, and some even display student discourse in a chat format.
Teachers who want students to organize their ideas in a specific way can look to Padlet’s timeline, map, or shelf layouts. With the timeline feature, students are required to organize information chronologically. The map layout allows students to note specific locations on maps with ease, while looking at other students’ annotations. The shelf layout is conducive to grouping ideas, similar to a Know, Want to Know, and Learned chart.
The anonymity of Padlet may help students feel more comfortable with sharing their ideas with the whole class, especially in a virtual setting. Furthermore, edits made to a Padlet bulletin board can be seen in real time, so teachers can ensure their students are participating.
Padlet is free to use at https://padlet.com/