Padlet is a simple and powerful way to let students collaborate through a digital interface. Plus, setup is super easy; after you create an account, you can make a new Padlet and share the link with students, who do not need accounts to contribute.  When students follow the link, they will be taken to a blank page with the Padlet title in the top left.  From there, all they have to do is double click in the blank space to create a sticky note in which they can write their ideas. The coolest part is that, similar to Google apps, all changes can be viewed in real time by all contributors, allowing students to see the class’s collaborative document developing instantaneously. 

I’ve seen a lot of teachers use Padlet to collect student exit tickets (allowing other students to, for example, see what their classmates’ takeaways were for that lesson) and I really like that idea. Because of Padlet’s simplicity and ease of use, there are a million ways it could be utilized. In my 10th grade elective class, we focus mainly on creating content for the online school newspaper. As we near the end of the school year, we’re shifting our focus to the marketing/advertising aspect of running a newspaper.  For this Padlet, students had to write down their key takeaways from the marketing research they’d been doing the past few days on how to increase our page views (click the picture to enlarge):We used this Padlet to develop “marketing teams” to focus on specific aspects of our campaign to increase viewership.

In a 7th grade classroom, for National Poetry Month, I had students post some of their favorite song lyrics in a Padlet.  The challenge was to use these song lyrics to create an original 10-15 line poem by combining these pre-existing lines of lyrics (click to enlarge):

These are two ways I’ve used Padlet in my classroom. If you want to try out Padlet, or you’ve used it some cool and interesting ways, please feel free to get in touch through the comments or on Twitter!