Experiments with the new map board in Padlet
I recently delivered a staff development session for our Instructional Design team, as part of which I was asked to cover what fun and exotic external tools we particularly use or recommend. I have an extremely comprehensive list in my browser bookmarks, and have a small handful of “go to’s”, but to put together a proper list I consulted with my CELT colleagues and put together our Top 10. Which had 12 things on it. Or 14 really if you include what I put on another slide to get more ideas. Whatever, counting is over rated, just ask the Republican Party. I thought it would be useful to share, so, in no particular order, here they are:
Kahoot
An audience, or student response system. It’s bright, loud, fun, and people seem to like it, though it’s not my preference as I think it’s a tad unprofessional for HE. Like most of the things on this list it works on a freemium model, with the free version limited to two question types – MCQ and True/False – and 50 players. Staff wanting to use it will need to create an account which requires an email address, but students do not have to sign-up to use it and can submit responses via a website or mobile app.
Poll Everywhere
This is my go-to student response system. Works on the same model as Kahoot, but looks a lot more professional. Less intuitive to set up, and only 40 responses per poll with the free account, but many more questions types (23, I think). Students can also respond by SMS, getting around the problem of ‘I don’t have a smartphone / data’ which can still be an issue sometimes.
ThingLink
An old favourite. Upload any image or photo to ThingLink, then make it interactive by adding hot spots that can include text, audio, video, or links to other content. Free version limits the amount of hot spot icons which are available to you, and each image has a viewing cap of 1,000. For an example of use, here is an interactive world map I created for a Sociology module showing country health profiles created by students: Country Health Profiles.
Piktochart
Infographics have become an increasingly popular way of showing a lot of data in a very simple, visually striking format, and Piktochart is an excellent and easy to use tool that lets you create these. Free accounts are limited to 5 charts, and export quality is limited, though still very good. Images can be exported as flat PNG files, or embedded with a bit of iframe code if you use interactive elements. In relation to the aforementioned Sociology project, here is an example I created in Piktochart using facts I totally made up about Wakanda (Black Panther was in cinemas when I ran this with the first cohort): Wakanda Health Profile.
Prezi
An online presentation tool, an alternative to PowerPoint or Keynote which breaks the ‘slide’ paradigm and allows you to move through a presentation in interesting ways. The free version only works online and has limited templates and editing options.
Padlet
Have you ever done any activities where you get students to stick post-its to a whiteboard, or add or move contributions to a board in some other way? Padlet is a way of doing that online. Free account is limited to 3 ‘pads’. I want to say this has been updated quite recently, as I remember it as just having variations of a whiteboard style layout, but when I’ve used it recently there are lots of new template options, including maps which I’ve been experimenting with. For EDPM10 I got students to annotate a map with a book, novel, philosopher or thinker which has influenced them. EDPM10 Exercise.
Canva
Not to be confused with Canvas! Canva is an online image editor with a very low barrier of entry as it provides around 100 design types to get started with, e.g. posters, flyers, banners, icons, and 250,000 template images and widgets.
Twine
An open source tool for creating interactive stories, think create your own adventure books.
Unsplash
I love Unsplash, I’ve been raving about it for years to anyone who’ll listen to me, and you’ll see Unsplash photos all over this blog. It’s a stock photography site, like Shutterstock, but everything on Unsplash is free to download and use for any non-commercial purpose. Very high quality and pretty comprehensive, and you don’t even need an account to use this one. All you have to do, as a matter of honour, is give credit and a link back to the original photographer. A pro-tip for Mac users – they have an app which gives you fresh new wallpaper on your desktop every day.
Creative Commons Image Search
And when Unsplash can’t do the job, or it’s images you need rather than photos, I recommend people use the Creative Commons image search instead of Google to ensure that you only get results that can be reused with a Creative Commons license. Also Google is evil.
Open Culture
I’m not sure if Open Culture bills itself as an open education repository (OER), but that is essentially what it is, or at least it’s a huge part of it. A massive collection of resources in the public domain, either because copyright has expired or been waived. Includes entire courses, books, art, photos, music, movies, etc.
Trello
Possibly the black sheep of this list, but included for the value I get from it. Trello is a super-powered to-do list using Kanban methodology that I use for organising my workload and, with mixed success, corralling my team! A big empty board that you populate with lists and cards, and each card can have a range of content within it, a detailed description, a task sub-list, due date, etc., and these can be moved around between lists and boards, and assigned to other team members. I’ve experimented with Trello a lot over the past couple of years, changing how I use it to try and get the best format that works for me. Currently I have a Work Board for the year, with lists categorising my typical work and any specific projects which need their own special management. I hesitated a little to include this one. It annoyed me earlier in the year when they changed how accounts work, now you need to use at Atlassian ID which doesn’t work as well, especially on the iOS app, and it seems to have been generally buggy of late. The quality and long-term trend is worrying me, and I am intermittently looking at alternatives.
Class Tools
This first of two items on my ‘also’ slide, Class Tools is a collection of little web apps, widgets and templates. There’s a random name pickers, an on-screen timer, lots of templates for creating fake but real(ish) looking social media posts, and lots of little games and quiz tools like a crossword generator. There are a couple of items on here that are premium, but most are free to use (with ads).
Top Tools for Learning
And finally, if this list isn’t long enough, the Top Tools 4 Learning site lists the top 200 tools for learning, as voted for by learning technologists, educators and other interested parties. Categorised for easy searching, ranked, and showing how tools have changed position which is great for spotting trends.
