Padlet for Informal Assessment and Class Discussions

Note: This is an update on the post "Pinterest in the Classroom."

Informal assessment is such a wonderful tool because it's quick and gives me an immediate fix on what my students are thinking, learning, and understanding. A show of hands is nice, but it's hard to remember who knows what and exit slips create a mountain of paper. In my opinion, the best informal assessment is open ended; requires the student to analyze, apply, evaluate or create; and leaves a lasting record that can be easily accessed for diagnostic purposes.

Enter Padlet (formerly known as WallWisher), this web-based bulletin board fills all my standards for a great informal assessment platform, it works well on computers and tablets, and it has some great options.

Setting up a Padlet is easy. You go to Padlet, sign-up, or log in using your Google account (and at this point, every teacher should have a Google account). There are some tutorial videos available, but they're not really necessary. The symbol-based buttons are pretty intuitive. Press "+" button to create a new Padlet wall. Give it a name and in the "description" box explain what you want your students to do.

The "settings" are accessed through a little gear shaped button, and it's the settings where Padlet really sets itself apart. Not only does it have the usual collection of options, like custom backgrounds and "share" options. There are thre settings that I really like: 1) An option to moderate the Padlet and approve all posts; 2) An option to put posts into a nice neat column or put it it wherever you want; 3) The ability to set the password for your Padlet. My Padlets always have passwords and they're usually vocabulary words, characters or other single word answers relevant to the topic. This provides its own source of assessment, and more importantly, helps to ensure students have at least some requisite knowledge on the topic and aren't just trying to rush through it.

Best of luck and please share your successes and challenges here!