Padlet

Padlet is a "small" cute tool that can make your teaching more interesting. As a form of online noticeboard, it allows users to put notes on the same page (which is called a wall on this site). The notes are not restricted to plain words. You can embed pictures, files, videos and urls in them. Once a wall is set up, you can invite your students to put things on it. If you don't want this wall to be accessed by anyone, there are quite a few privacy options for you to choose (see the picture below).

In the context of teaching, this tool can be used as a discussion board which allows students to put their ideas on it with their names shown or anonymously (which is good for engaging shy students who do not get used to speaking up in the class). Also, teachers can turn this into a showcase that displays students' work on a particular task (students' work can be a video, powerpoint slides, a passage with pictures, or a combination of these things, etc). One point worth noting is that the wall allows different students to work on it simultaneously. Once a note is finished, all the students and the teacher can see it immediately.

In terms of ELT, I may use it as a pre-task for an oral activity, such as an IELTS speaking task. Before the class, I'll give students the topic, for example, talk about your favorite food/place to travel/movie star, etc., and then assign them homework which requires them to add their ideas (they can include a picture and a few words or sentences in it) on the Padlet wall that I'll have prepared. In order to motivate students, teacher can first put his/her own one as an example, and the topic you select should be appealing to your target students. For instance, a place that you would like to travel to can be a topic that arouse many teenage students' interest, and their peers' posts with beautiful landscape pictures may encourage their participation. Below is a screenshot of a wall created by my ICT classmates. The photos they put are so attractive that after seeing this I wanted to explore and listen to their stories about these places!

In addition, there is a slideshow created by Tom Barrett introducing 32 ways to use Padlet in the classroom. And you can also watch the video below to get a better understanding of this tool.