Getting your students to record a videocast using Padlet

Padlet is an online collaborative tool that allows students to share content they create with their community. Until very recently, students could only share text or pictures, but Padlet has been updated to allow learners to share video and audio content.

While video recording is not exactly a novelty, encouraging students to share their thoughts about a topic they’ve studied about in a collaborative platform in which they can give each other constructive feedback can be quite engaging. Also, using a platform like Padlet will create a video portfolio you can use to keep track of learners’ progress and provide them with effective evidence of learning. If you or your school is up for it, this video portfolio can even be used as part of the assessment of your students!

Activity: Recording a videocast using Padlet
Level: Intermediate to advanced
Material: Mobile phone or computer, Padlet

Procedures:

1. Choose a lesson in which learners are asked to give their opinion about something, such as a lesson in which they discuss what causes global warming and what we can do to prevent it.
2. Create a Padlet board (www.padlet.com) before the lesson with a question students will be invited to answer. Ideally, this should be a question that encourages learners to give more complex responses, such as ‘What is the impact of your carbon footprint on the environment and how can you reduce yours?’
3. At the end of the lesson, show the platform to learners using a computer. It might be a good idea to show them how to record a video using the tool, but this is super easy!
4. Ask students to record their video responses at home, setting a deadline. Tell them to reply to their peers’ responses commenting on the video.
5. In the following lesson, ask students to share, in small groups, their thoughts on recording a video like the one they did. What did they learn in the process? What challenges did they face?
6. Give feedback to students on the complexity of the responses and how well they did. If time allows, you can also give them individual feedback on language accuracy, range of vocabulary, fluency etc. This can be an interesting way of showing to learners the importance of their participation in the learning process.

This activity can be an interesting starting point for the creation of a video portfolio that will showcase learners’ progress over time. If you are working with teens, this can also be an effective way of sharing their individual progress with their families, and if you are working with adults, you can use the portfolio to point out how much progress they have made and how they have managed to incorporate new language onto the new videos they record.