Let’s take a look at Padlet’s new features and how you can use them in your classroom.
Padlet is a great platform that gets your students collaborating, and you can use it either in the online or face-to-face classroom. Just a few months ago, Padlet rolled out a lot of new features. I’m going to focus on five that I think are most useful for English teachers.
Padlet polls
The first feature that I think is really useful for teachers is polls. So we can open up any Padlet board, and we can add a poll. Now, as you may think, polls are really useful as a platform for discussion in the classroom. So we just ask our group a question and give them a few options, and anyone who is contributing on that board can answer that question. So you might want to set a question to the class, and then, judging the results of that poll, you can then use that to have a discussion in the classroom.
Another way to use polls is to test your students’ understanding of certain grammar tenses. For example, you could use it to test their understanding of the use of the present continuous. Give them a few sentences that explain the use of it and see how your students get on. You could even use the poll to check the meaning of some vocabulary, perhaps new emergent vocabulary from your previous class. Put the word in the poll and give them three definitions, and two of them are incorrect. See how your students get on.
Padlet mentions
The second feature that I think could be useful for teachers is that now you can tag or mention other students. This platform is great for collaboration, and this is another way you can get students to collaborate with each other. So you’ve got all the students collaborating on the same board, and all you need to do is press the “@” sign and start typing the student’s name. This will then send a notification to that student so they can comment on that particular post.
Remember, anyone that can be tagged must be contributing to the board. This can be a useful way to do a simple “Find Someone Who” activity where students have to find certain students and ask them certain questions. Perhaps they have a question that’s different for each student, and they would write their question and just tag the student they would like to ask to the post.
I actually did write a post already on Padlet, which included five ideas on how to use it in the classroom, and it’s just right here.
Schedule Posts
This third feature is great for teachers. You can now schedule posts. So imagine that you are having a board open with your class, but you’d like to ask them a question or set them a task for the following week. So all you need to do is set the task or the question and change the date to the following Monday, for example. This means that when your students log in to the Padlet board, they will then find that question ready on a Monday. This could be a great pre-task to the class.
For example, imagine you’d like your students to share some photos of what they did on the weekend. So, on the Monday morning, you set a post saying, “Hey, everyone, please upload a photo that you took on your weekend to share and describe in the class.”
Padlet and Google Drive
The fourth feature that I think is going to be really useful, both for students and teachers, is that now Padlet is integrated with Google Drive. So, if you’d like to share PDFs, images, or videos, these are going to be directly uploaded onto Padlet. No more copying or pasting links as we did before.
So, as a teacher, perhaps you have a worksheet as a PDF, and you would like your students to use that as part of the Padlet. All you need to do is log into your Google account, find the PDF, and upload it to the post. The students will then get to see the PDF there on the Padlet, and they will not need to go into Google Drive.
Padlet’s AI Tool
The fifth feature, which I think is probably the most interesting, is a feature called “I Can’t Draw.” Now, this is Padlet’s AI tool. So, the way this works is that all you need to do is write a short prompt, and it’s going to produce an image. Now, I remember with Padlet, you’d have to search for images online, and sometimes you couldn’t find exactly what you wanted. Now, with this AI tool, you can write exactly what you’d like to depict, and it’s going to give you some help and it’s going to give you some examples that you can use in the Padlet.
One way you could use this in class is to get your students to use this AI tool, write a prompt, and put the image on the Padlet board. Then, the other students are going to comment trying to guess what the original prompt was. You could even use it to practice something like the present continuous. Get the students to describe a situation using the present continuous using the AI tool, and then the students have to look at the image and try to describe the action that is being depicted in the image.
Thank you for reading about Padlet’s new features and how you can use them in your classroom.