Hello readers! I have decided to incorporate my technology graduate class with this blog! This way it saves me time thinking of blog post ideas (well, I think of a lot actually — I just never have time to execute the ideas!), and also lets me share with all of you the wonderful tech tools I am discovering in my grad. course. I am taking the course at Baldwin Wallace University (also my alma mater), and my professor is Dr. Finelli – she is amazing!
Hopefully this will encourage me to make shorter blog posts and therefore more frequent blog posts. Today’s post is about the website Padlet. I had never heard of Padlet before! It is very easy to use. Go to padlet.com and create a free account. I linked mine through Google, which was easy and time saving. Then you make a new page and you can pretty much add anything you want to it! The open framework can either be a great thing, or like me, a not-so-great thing. I sat there wondering, what should I do?? It’s blank! Well here is a great presentation to help you think of some ideas: 32 Interesting Ways to Use Padlet.
From this, I decided to create an electronic version of a K-W-L chart! I am focusing on science for my grad. course, and so my KWL chart topic was magnetism (this goes along with our 4th grade physical science unit – Ohio Standards). I have included the link to my Padlet in this blog post, but the students have not actually used the Padlet site yet. I inserted some example responses that students may write when they actually get to do the activity.
Even if you don’t have access to technology in your building, you can still use this website! I plan to use it in the computer lab when my class is able to visit once a week, since we do not have laptops or Chromebooks in our rooms (no wireless internet unfortunately). If you can’t do that though, I was thinking you could record students’ responses in the Padlet as they dictate them to you during the lesson! All you would need for that is your teacher computer and a way to display it (I have a digital projector in my room and Mimeo board).
One last thing – I do believe students need their own accounts to access Padlet and to write in it, but I am not sure. I am going to try this in a few weeks when my next session of science begins (we alternate science and social studies every few weeks).
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving break! I am off work Wednesday to Sunday and am traveling home to visit family while my husband stays here in CLE for work. In October, to follow up on my last post (I realized I have not posted since then – yikes), we traveled to Indianapolis to see the Bengals/Colts game. I don’t really want to talk about that since it was a terrible game, and then to top it all off, our car broke down on the way home! But we still had a great time that weekend visiting with friends and family. Enjoy the holiday!
The Four Rs 