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Channel: collaboration – Leicester Learning Institute: Enhancing learning and teaching

Getting started with Padlet

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padlet logo

 

Padlet is a free online tool that allows you to collaborate with students or colleagues. It is like an online pin board. You can use it for brainstorming ideas, question and answer activities, sharing resources, gathering opinions and evaluations.
 
You can add different types of files and web links, including video, audio, and images.
To get a free account go to padlet.com and sign up. There are also apps for Apple and Android devices.
 
How Padlet has been used at the University.

 

 


Customising and sharing your Padlet

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padlet logo

 

 

You can customise your Padlet by adding different colour backgrounds, or header images, and the posts can be displayed in different ways.
 
You can share your Padlet via social media, or embed it into a web site or a blog, or Blackboard. You can also change the privacy settings.
 
Watch the video to see how.

 

 

Sharing QuickMark sets

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sharing

 

If you create your own QuickMark sets, they will only be available to you under your log in.

However, you can share your QuickMark sets with your colleagues.

Watch the video to see how to share a QuickMark set by exporting or importing them.

 

 

 

 

flickr photo shared by EbbeSand under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license

Crowdsourcing using an online noticeboard

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Padlet is a free online noticeboard, which enables you to post thoughts and ideas on ‘sticky notes’. You can add text, images, video, links or documents to the board from any device, and it can be shared publically or with a closed group. There are several ways Padlet can be used in the classroom to aid learning and teaching.

Encouraging participation
During a lecture you can ask students to post questions they might have onto an online noticeboard using their smartphone or tablet, and the questions will be displayed anonymously. This means that students who may not have the confidence to ask questions verbally in the classroom are more likely to participate. By having questions on a Padlet you can also keep the questions for future reference and can keep track of whether certain questions arise regularly, and adjust your teaching accordingly.

Example of a Padlet noticeboard

Canvassing opinions on a topic
You can use a Padlet to collect together ideas from a cohort of student, whether they are campus based or distance learning. The notes can be moved about into groups to show where themes are developing, or they could be used between cohorts to share ideas with a wider group. This can be a useful tool for helping students develop persuasive arguments to include in essays.

Curating resources
If you’re explaining a particular concept, you could ask students to get into groups and look for tutorials and resources on that subject, and then post links on a Padlet. This will crowdsource a selection of online resources that students can review and compare, and then reference later to help them. This will help students develop their group working, research, and technology skills.

Sharing images
Padlet is a very visual tool and is a great way of displaying images. A good example of how this has been used to good effect is in the Behind the Scenes at the 21st Century Museum MOOC (massive open online course). Learners were asked to think about an object that means something to them and share a photo of it on the Padlet along with a brief explanation of why it is important. As MOOC learners are based all over the world, this exercise gave them an opportunity to find out a bit more about each other and develop social learning.

Examples of sharing images on a Padlet noticeboard

For more information about Padlet, and other uses of online noticeboards, visit the Leicester Learning Institute website

Using the different types of blog in Blackboard

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Blogging is a good way to get students to engage with a topic and to collaborate with each other. Students can prepare for seminars or tutorials, allowing the teacher to move to deeper learning more quickly. Writing and critical skills can also improve. Quieter and less confident students can prepare their contributions and have their voice heard.

Blackboard has three types of blog:

  • Individual
  • Course
  • Group

 

Individual

Each student gets their own blog. They can write posts, and other students can comment.

individual blog image

Course

There is one blog for the entire course. Each student on the course can add blog entries and comments.

course blog image

Group

When you set up groups there is an option to include a group blog. Members of the group can add posts and comment. Other students on the course can view the blog and can add comments.

group blog image

 

 

Setting up blogs in Blackboard

Click here to see how to set up each of the different types of blog.

 

Click here to read some research by Sullivan and Longnecker (2014) into the effectiveness of blogs for teaching.

The study looked at the use of class blogs in four science communication classes. The students felt that the benefits of blogging to them included:

  • improvements in their writing,
  • intellectual exchange with other students, and
  • motivation to write better.

Reference

Sullivan, M., & Longnecker, N. (2014). Class blogs as a teaching tool to promote writing and student interaction. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 30 (4).

Reflections on the ALT conference 2016

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In September Alex Moseley, Matt Mobbs, Stephen Walker and myself attended the ALT (Association for Learning Technology) Conference at the University of Warwick. This annual conference provides an opportunity to share learning technology research, practice and policy work from across sectors. The theme this year was Connect, Collaborate, Create – the full programme is on the ALT website.

 

The conference opened with a keynote from Josie Fraser, a Social and Educational Technologist, entitled In the Valley of the Trolls. Josie used the example of Microsoft’s Tay, an artificial intelligence chat bot, which was designed to interact with people on Twitter to develop an understanding of conversational interaction. The more it chatted, the more personalised its contributions would become. This was targeted by ‘trolls’ who made it mimic deliberately offensive language, and within 16 hours Microsoft had to remove the Tay account. Josie discussed the motivations of trolling behaviour (‘doing it for the lulz’) and looked at how we can continue to work, learn and share openly online while protecting ourselves from trolling. The best advice remains to not get involved in conversation with a troll – ignore, block and report.

 

Ian Livingstone, co-founder of the games company Games Workshop and co-author of the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series, gave an inspiring keynote. He discussed what he’d learnt from 40 years in the games industry, from being a pioneer in the writing of non-linear fiction, where the reader gets to make choices about where the story will lead, to his current work of using games to improve the lives of children with disabilities.

 

Our favourite sessions

Louise Drumm, from Glasgow Caledonian University, presented ‘Connections between theory and practice: rhizomatic teaching with digital technologies’ where she discussed the findings of a doctoral research project which asked the question ‘what role does theory play in university teaching with digital technologies?’ Rhizome theory (Deleuze & Guattari 1987) was used as a theoretical basis to investigate types and pockets of activity. The research interviewed lecturers about how they theorise their teaching practice, and uncovered many ‘folk theories’. Louise talked about ‘bought sense’ – the way academics choose technology based on their pedagogical beliefs.

 

Andrew Raistrick and Steven Bentley, from the University of Huddersfield, discussed their new approach to staff development courses in ‘Flipping heck! Be careful what you wish for‘. They had found previously that training courses were not particularly well attended, and so surveyed staff about what they would like training sessions to be. They found staff would prefer much short sessions, so offered a ‘pic ‘n’ mix’ approach where people could attend small stand-alone training elements over a number of days. They also tried a flipped classroom approach by asking staff to watch a video of preparatory material before the session, and use the face-to-face time to try out more practical elements.

 

Manchester Metropolitan University’s presentation, ‘An experiment in open-access, micro-learning for educational technology training’ gave an interesting look at how they are engaging academic colleagues in technology enhanced learning training. With lack of time being one of the main factors preventing staff from attending training sessions, MMU have developed #1minuteCPD, a micro-learning blog designed to provide short, daily insights into different technologies. They have seen a good take-up of the resource, and found that 17% of staff look at the posts on a daily basis, and 50% weekly. At the University of Leicester we have developed a similar resource on this blog, providing short, one or two minute posts or video tutorials with the tag #uoljam. If you have found these useful or have suggestions for topics you’d like to see covered so let us know.

 

Cork Institute of Technology have developed a similar approach, being developed as part of the TELU.me research project, a consortium approach to micro-learning. These short ‘nuggets’ of learning can also be plugged together to create personalised longer, more in-depth courses.

 

Sadly as I was driving, I couldn’t take part in the #altc #play travel game on my journey home, so I will sum up the ALT conference 2016 in 3 emojis here instead.

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VoiceThread – voice discussions and assessments in Blackboard

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VoiceThread is an online collaboration and sharing tool that you can use within Blackboard. It allows you to share images, documents and videos to which others can add audio, video or text comments. You can draw on the screen while you are talking to highlight what you are talking about.

 

You could use VoiceThread in a number of ways in your teaching, for example to provide audio feedback on student work or hold asynchronous (not real time) audio discussions with your students. The VoiceThread Higher Education page has examples of how it can be used.

 

 

For more information about VoiceThread, see the help page. If you would like to try using VoiceThread but need some advice, you can contact the Leicester Learning Institute.





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