Great Classroom Idea From Padlet

I received an email from Padlet (formally Wallwisher) advertising a great idea for the ELA classroom.  If you are not familiar with Padlet, please review my post on it.  Padlet has many options for working collaboratively with your students.  One way is you can create a wall to develop writing skills through poetry with your students.

Wings of Flight is a wall created by Padlet as a great example of students displaying short poems they have created.

Check out Padlet's Gallery of examples others have created to help create ideas of your own.

Palet is safe.  Students need NO account in order to participate.

Invite Experts Across Country to Your Classroom

From Richard Byrne, Skype in the Classroom features some great ideas on how you can bring experts to your students via video conferencing with Skype.  They also allow you to connect with other classrooms and teachers who are interested in collaborating.  Listed in each content category are listings of teachers looking for interested classroom connections.

For instance, just posted Feb 1st, Mr Doktor's urban Middle School Geography classroom is looking to discuss physical, cultural, and socioeconomic differences with another classroom; as well as being involved in a service learning project.

Video conferencing (or Distance Learning) is an amazing way to bring in outside visitors and experts in their field to your students.  Not only can it be FREE (some organizations do charge fees), but it is an exciting and engaging way for students to interact with these visiting experts.

Richard Byrne's example demonstrates Yellowstone National Park's Parkranger, Beth Tyler, who offers to visit classrooms via Skype.  Check out the video on his post from a classroom in Maine.  Skype in the Classroom offers many examples of how you can do this, however, video conferencing can be a simple as contacting a professor of your (our) local university or college and have them discuss material relevant to your unit lessons.  Contact a Geology professor for classroom discussions on strata or volcanoes.

Our school system has Tandberg service available with a long list of contacts and schools in our state system that can be contacted for FREE.  Collaborate with another classroom in another part of our state on a project.

Here are some more great video conferencing ideas from Mashable.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions concerning video conferencing and opptions.

A word of advice:  when searching for good video conferencing content, not all organizations offer FREE video conferencing.  Unfortunately, though they look education-friendly, they are out to make a buck as well.  Sometimes you have to get creative or dig a little deeper; that can go for anything, can't it.

Wallwisher to Padlet: Online Collaboration Tool

Collaboration has been a tool in education that has been at the forefront of importance and effectiveness when it comes to 21st Century skills.  From Google Docs to wikis, collaboration of ideas and content has been proven to be a powerful learning tool in the classrooms as well as in business.

An "old school" online collaboration forum, Wallwisher, has gotten (is getting) an overhaul recently, and is changing its brand to Padlet.  Jonathan Wylie explains Wallwisher's changeover.  I was introduced to Wallwisher about 3 years ago.  Unfortunately, in the tech world, that's "old school".

Originally Wallwisher has been a great platform for teacher/student classroom collaboration.  Teachers can create a "wall" and allow students to post comments on the wall as "stickies".  Classrooms have used this online tool for generating ideas, creating discussions, sharing documents; develop question/answer feedback; treat it like a noticeboard for updates and notifications; and much more.  Wallwisher has continued to improve through the years, and now they will be getting even better.  For now you can access Wallwisher by its

Generally it is the same as a standard forum, but has the visual appeal and user-friendly interface that will get students excited and comfortable using, and can do much more.  Participants to your Wallwisher wall can upload documents that other can view right on the wall.  What a great way to have your students read documents you have posted and comment on the same wall.  Right on their front page they share 12 great ideas on how you can collaborate with your students online.  Any kind of forum like this is a great way to get your quiet, insecure students to speak up or voice an opinion.

Wallwisher makes your walls very manageable and safe.  Students do NOT need to sign up for an account.  You create the wall and set up your security.  You can keep the wall private with a password, so that only those in your classroom who have the link and password can access your wall.  You can customize a URL (providing that no one else has taken it).  Get creative; use your students to generate a wacky name for their classroom wall.