Padlet and Narrated Tutorials

This week for my grad class I had two assignments that I needed to create.  The first one was creating a presentation using Padlet.  I like Padlet as a way for students (or even other teachers) to post thoughts, ideas, or what they already know about a subject on a virtual type bulletin board.  I also like that you can include links, videos, and pictures. This week we needed to think about a topic in education and use pictures to create a Padlet presentation on the topic.  I chose my topic on Flexible Seating as that seems to have taken over many classrooms.  I've seen many blog posts and classroom pictures of teachers ditching traditional classroom seating and getting all types of other seating for students to sit on and work from.  I give my students choice of where to sit during Daily 5, Math centers, I'm Done What Can I Do.  They can sit anywhere they want around the room; in their cubbies, on pillows, in comfy chairs I have, just a different part of the carpet, or even at someone else's desk (with permission).  For me, I still want my students to have a specific desk that they go to for certain parts of the day.  I feel they need to learn how to sit in a classroom chair for more than five minutes, as when they grow up they won't always get the choice of the type of seat they will be able to sit on.  It was challenging to create the Padlet to share those thoughts in only 6 pictures and using pictures that are allowed for reuse through creative commons licensing.  There are so many great pictures out there, but I wasn't able to use those since I was posting it on the web and didn't have permission.  I think that would also be challenging for my students.  If it's just for classroom use and students were able to just cite where they found the picture, I feel that would be easier and they could work together to create a presentation on a variety of different things that we are learning about in the classroom.  It would be a great way to create a presentation and share with the class.  I have not used Padlet with my 2nd graders yet, but in the future I would like to use it as a different way to create a KWL, where there could be a Padlet for each letter.  Then if we want to look at it or add to it, we can easily pull it up and do so.  It's a space saver in the classroom and students can access it on any device to add to it.

I also had to create a narrated tutorial and I can definitely see the advantages of that with my 2nd graders.  There are MANY times when I give directions and students don't remember what to do as they have a hard time remembering multi-step directions on their own.  Creating a tutorial that they could stop and play as needed would be fantastic!  Again the problem I was having was coming up with an idea I could do in 4-6 pictures using pictures that are allowed for reuse with the creative commons license.  Once I was able to come up with one, the process wasn't hard.  We did this using Adobe Spark.  You just click on the plus sign, then video, and it's very straight forward from there.  This would be very handy if you had multiple iPads and could put them at a station for student use.  Again if it's only being used for classroom use, I could take pictures of the actual materials and steps in my classroom to use for the tutorial and that would be much easier.  I like the idea of students creating their own narrated tutorial as a stepping stone or alternative to How-To writing.  It would make students stop and think about each step and talk about it.

Both of these assignments could also be used as a different kind of assessment for students to do to explain and show what they've learned about a certain topic.  If you're not 1:1 and just have a few devices (I only have 5), you would still be able to have students do both of these, you would just need to allow more time for all the students to complete it.  They are both things to consider using in the classroom.