Week 5: Collaboration

Create a collaborative class with Padlet!

Introducing Padlet!

As teachers, we often try to get our learners to collaborate and work together for our lessons, most of the time as a pair or in small groups. However, aren’t you tired of the traditional way of asking your students to do a group presentation using paper or writing things on the whiteboard? Perhaps you are worried that your students might be bored of it too? If your answers are yes, then why not try to incorporate the use of technology with websites such as Padlet for any collaborative task in your lesson?

Padlet is as a digital pinboard that let you do more than just sticking notes (think of pictures, videos, and link) - cool right?
[Source: Image by Gerdd Altmann from Pixabay]

What is a Padlet?

Padlet is an online-collaborative learning tool that provides a ‘free’ shared working space for learners to work together on any given task, homework or project. Using Padlet, they can share their ideas and resources such as pictures, video, links on a digital board similar to sticking sticky notes on a pin board. Sounds interesting right?

[Source: YouTube - 'Introduction to Padlet]

How can language teachers use Padlet?

As a language teacher, I think you can do a lot of stuff with Padlet in your lesson but perhaps the main idea is for teachers to use it as a platform for their students to work together on a project. Some of my own ideas on how to use Padlet in a lesson are:

§  Brainstorming:  
We can get our students into small groups and give them a topic to research or a task to do. They can first search for information and collect their own resources individually and later share and discuss their findings on Padlet as a group.

§  Presentation: 
We can also ask our students to present the Padlet board that they have created on the screen and talk about what they have done as a speaking activity.

§   Writing task: 
We can also ask them to refer to the Padlet that they have made and ask them to write a short essay from all of the information that they have collected. 

I've started using Padlet in my teaching since 2019. Here are some examples of the Padlets that I've made for my lessons.

Again, depending on your teaching style and sense of creativity, you can do quite a lot of stuff with Padlet in your lesson. Here is a tutorial video to help you to get started with Padlet:

Watch this informative video from Russel Stannard about how to use Padlet.

[Source: YouTube - 'Padlet 2019 - A full introduction to Padlet']

 👍  Strengths: 👍

Some of the reasons why I like to use Padlet in my lessons are:

1.     Padlet is very easy to use and of course it is ‘free’. Learners will have fun using it because they can draw on the template given and also use search engine such as Google to find pictures, videos or online articles for their project or assignment.

Padlet users can use Google to search for images, videos, gifs, audio and website using its search function.

2.     There are lots of different templates with various attractive background pictures that you can choose from! Users will definitely be spoilt for choice.

There are so many different wallpapers to choose from. You can even add your own picture and use it as a wallpaper for Padlet!

3.     Padlet creates a supportive environment that encourages collaboration between learners. They can easily share their Padlet with others via link, username, email or QR code.

4.     You can write comments and give feedback on work done by others and vice versa. Most learners will be motivated to do their best because they know that their Padlet will be read/viewed by others.

5.     Using Padlet also gives a sense of ownership to our learners. They can express their ideas and show their creativity in creating their own Padlet and take pride in the hard work that they have put in their creation.

6.     With Padlet, you can use it in your lesson alongside other online learning websites such as Twiddla, ConceptBoard, Tricider and many more! It is really up to you and your creativity as a teacher - the sky’s the limit!

This is a Padlet that I've created as a group leader for my ICT class to work on a task with 3 other friends of mine. It was such a fun class! 🥳

 👎 Limitations: 👎

In my opinion, Padlet has three major limitations:

1.     Padlet needs to improve its communicative aspect by adding chat box and video conferencing features to allow students to instantly communicate with each other especially if they want to do their work at different places. Although Padlet allows its users to work collaboratively without having to be physically at the same place, based on my own experience as a user, it wasn’t a very pleasant one. Thus, hopefully in the future, it would be a great idea to add these two features to its platform instead of having to use a different softwares such as Skype, Zoom or even texting using phones to communicate with each other.

2.     After using Padlet for some times, I couldn’t help to notice that its features are quite limited. With Padlet, you can do some writing task as well as sharing pictures, videos and links. However, you cannot add more than one picture or video per post which is rather annoying. On top of that, what I think is missing are some other basic functions such as the ability to create a poll to vote or change your font size and colour.

3.     Unfortunately, if you are using the free version, you are limited to only a certain amount of padlets that you can create and use. However, if you feel that Padlet is a useful and interesting platform for you to use in your teaching, you can invest and get yourself a ‘Padlet Pro’. This is an upgrade premium version of Padlet that has unlimited amount of padlets for you to use plus other extra cool features from just USD $8.25 a month.

Sadly, I have used up all of my free Padlet quota. 😢

Padlet: Yes 👍 or No? 👎

[Source: free to use GIFs from GIPHY]

According to Laal and Ghodsi (2012), some of the benefits of collaborative learning are; it helps to lower students’ level of anxiety, create a healthy support system for students, and encourages them to be active learners in the learning process thus consequently resulting in positive improvement in terms of the learners' academic results. As teachers, we understand the importance and benefits of having our learners to work collaboratively together. Using technology also adds a fun and futuristic element to our lesson and most learners generally enjoy using them too. 


Unfortunately, I have to admit that Padlet is not designed for teachers who are teaching in a low-resource context. However, if you have the facilities and enough resources in your institution, I would recommend you to try to use online-collaborative tools such as Padlet in your lessons with your learners. If you did try then please feel free to share your story with me in the comment section below. I would love to hear your story about using online-collaborative tools in your language classroom. 

Best wishes, 

Kamal

References:

Laal, M. & Ghodsi, S. M. (2012). Benefits of collaborative learning. Procedia - social and behavioural sciences. 31, pp.486-490.