The Pedagogical Possibilities of Padlet (Phew). They Say It Can Be Embedded, so I Will Give It a Try (aka, how I spent part of my first day of 2022)

When we all went online in 2019, I was fortunate to have the National Writing Project family behind me. We've been using ZOOM for almost as long as I've been at Fairfield University, and online professional development has been one of the wheelhouses. Almost my entire career, I used Blogger and Wordpress to build my courses so that students had a go-to place for recapping lessons and accessing material. Perhaps this is why, spring 2019, Suzie Q's sharing of Padlet caught my attention. We were simply talking when she asked, "How do you not know Padlet?"

Long story short, she shared one she created for an Advanced Institute for teachers, and I began using the online tool with my PD, workshops with youth, national conferences, and courses. She has been doing the same, and we have been documenting our teaching choices via Padlet for  over a year (cough cough) - even hit submit on an article about it before the new year (fingers crossed). 

As part of my faculty liaison position with the Center for Academic Excellence at Fairfield University, I was asked to do a back-to-spring-teaching workshop for faculty. Alas, the dates didn't correspond with my other service responsibilities, so I asked Dr. James if she'd be willing to do a digital workshop...one that can be offered asynchronously. Being wonderful as she is, she agreed.

The workshop allowed us to co-present so faculty can attend a pedagogical "meeting" to learn about Padlet , while seeing/learning models from our own work. I've never done anything like this and am channeling my inner Troy Hicks (so many of us are in debt to his brilliance and leadership in our network). It's cool to work in such modes.

There's an introductory video (26 minutes), a mini-tutorial (4 minutes), then the rest is up to individual workshop participants. I'm a spatial, visual learner, and I love organizing teaching so it is as effective as it can be to assist students to reach their goals. We're all in the same academic "Karalvan" together, and I'm posting on day two of a new year because (a) I want to see if the Padlet really embeds (note: it did/does) and (b) Finishing this project yesterday morning was the highlight of my day.

Dr. Susan James and I have presented variations of our work at two conferences in the last year and I remember one comment from a senior literacy scholar in the field of YA from the Q&A, "Phew. I'm retiring this year, and that was just beautiful. I am in absolute amazement with what the two of you are doing for your students...for us" We appreciated that.

And here we go in 3..2..1. Boom! You can interact with the PD (even from this blog)!