Over the past few weeks within our new Bridge Building unit, Padlet has taken center stage as our tool of choice for warm ups.
Why: The Padlet came about because we wanted our students to write more and assist them in refining their sentence structure. Previously, we have done this through Google Docs but ran into the issue that we couldn't add daily prompts to a document once students made a copy of it. How we use it: As students come into our block class, we track our unit through a shoots and ladders like 3 week guide (12 days with each day acting as a class todo list). The students then transition into their Padlet prompt that is accessed through Google Classroom. The prompt includes 2 questions, sometimes with images, sometimes without. At this point we are having students post anonymously but this will change once this cohort is switched out (I will talk about the reason later). As students answer the prompts, we stamp their 12 day guide and then spend a couple of minutes debriefing the comments as a class. Pros: Students are beginning to read other's comments (I wouldn't had guessed it would take several days for students to realize that they could read others' comments to get ideas but...), participation is pretty close to 100% each day and instead of students saying, "I don't know how to answer" or "I don't get it", they are looking up concepts that they do not know (GASSPPPP!). Initially, we were not going over the comments the first week, but since we have been, students are making a deeper connection with the tool our unit design and asking questions about the prompts. Cons: As students find that they can read others comments and ctlr+c is copy, we have had to open a discussion about their own thoughts, work and plagiarism. This in itself is a pro because it is a topic that we should be touching on anyways. Currently, students are posting anonymously, which came about because we wanted students to feel safe writing what they thought without fear of being wrong. As we enter into a new cohort in the following week, we will have students sign in to rid the anonymous postings so we can get back to our original goal of using Padlet as a writing tool. Being a comment thread design, it is difficult to use Padlet as an individual assessment tool. This is countered as its usefulness as a whole classroom understanding tool. In Day 5 we asked about 3 types of bridges, students were unsure of what we were asking and started listing bridges in Portland by name (Portland is bridge city for those that do not know). We instantly knew that as a class we had to as a class begin grouping the Portland bridges by design before the lesson. Closing: Padlet is a tool that I will continue to use in my class and can see its use extending beyond the warm up prompts. Earlier this year, I used Flipgrid and recently was told that Padlet has a video response functionality that I am interested in providing as an option for responses.
1 Comment
Scott Marsden
2/20/2018 05:14:51 pm
Great that you are using Padlet in such an innovative way, Joseph. I need to take a new look at it. Great that you also find those teachable moments to talk about digital citizenship.
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AuthorHello, I'm Joe. Welcome to writings about my thought process throughout the journey of Touro's Innovative Learning Graduate Program. Archives
July 2018
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