Remote Tools For Exploration & Explanation

Padlet – https://padlet.com/

Padlet is a technology that has been around for a long, long while — but it has really started to pick up educational users during our recent efforts to teach remotely. Here’s why: Padlet allows teachers to create simple pages on the web that students can post content to in a variety of ways.

Students can record video or audio responses on a Padlet. They can also embed pictures or search for Gifs to add to a Padlet. Finally, students can link to documents, record their desktop or write text responses on a Padlet.

Think about how important that versatility is.

Have students who struggle with written responses to your questions? Use Padlet and let them record audio responses. Want students to create videos as evidence of mastery of performance tasks? Use Padlet to host all of those demonstrations of mastery in one place at one time. Want to model effective writing for your students? Use Padlet to record your desktop while you demonstrate your expectations. - Bill Ferriter

Get the support you need

The Padlet support center has a ton of resources to help you get started. Take a tour of the app. View example padlets in the gallery. Watch tutorials on our YouTube channel. And contact our amazing support team anytime at hello@padlet.com.

Install a browser extension

Insert web links onto Padlet with one click. Install extension

Download the App

Available for iPhone, iPad, and Android. Download app

Edpuzzle – https://edpuzzle.com/

Let’s face it: Whether students are learning in our classrooms or learning remotely from home, OUR job is to deliver content, right? We have to make sure that every student masters the outcomes that our learning teams have identified as essential.

One of my favorite content delivery tools has always been Edpuzzle because it allows teachers to embed questions into videos that they have always used to teach essential content.

Here’s an example.

There’s nothing fancy about this task at all, right? If we were in class, I would have shown this video and asked the exact same questions of my students. We would have probably done that in a whole group discussion — but the content and the questions wouldn’t have changed because they (1). highlight the essentials that I want my students to know and (2). give me the chance to assess student mastery of important ideas.

What Edpuzzle allows for in a remote learning environment, however, is some quick and easy assessment of student progress. Each multiple choice question is graded automatically by the platform. In my Edpuzzle Gradebook, I can also easily see which students have tackled the task already and which haven’t gotten started yet. That helped me to monitor participation levels during remote learning.

Edpuzzle has also become a great tool for initial reteaching and reassessment in my classroom. If a student in my room struggles on an assessment, I often have them turn to Edpuzzle videos first. The thinking behind that instructional choice is that many students who struggle don’t need a new lesson to master content. They just need a quick review. Edpuzzle can provide both the initial reteaching and reassessment for me automatically.

Finally, I’ve also started to tinker with Edpuzzle as an extension activity, asking STUDENTS who are ready to move forward to create review activities for their classmates.

You can learn more about my work with Edpuzzle for remediation and extension in this post on my blog. - Bill Ferriter