Sneak peek: Gallery walks are a great way for students to observe each other’s work. Padlet makes this possible to do virtually while distance learning!
I love using gallery walks to showcase student work. This is simply not possible right now during pandemic-education where I have half of my students learning from home. It is tough creating a sense of community when students are not all together, meeting each other face-to-face.
In a normal world, I post student work (usually cutting off their names) in the hallway. Typically, my students would take a reflection sheet with a few questions and set out to fill them in as they observe their peers’ work. 2020 is not a normal world, we all know this, and we as teachers are all looking for ways to engage our students and try to help them stay in their creative minds.
This artistic expression + reflection has long been a favorite of my students, so it saddened me to realize that I had to scrap that plan. One small win for my classes this year has been using Padlet for a virtual gallery walk.
There are three parts to this assignment.
1. Students create an image (using Google Slides)
For this specific assignment, I used this adorable virtual locker template from Prendiendo motores (snag this for free in her store!). Students designed their own locker to show their interests and some even made a Bitmoji of themselves!
When students are done creating their slide, they need to save it as an image.
In Google Slides, they select the slide they want to save as an image, go to file, download, and select JPEG.
2. Students upload their image to Padlet
As the teacher, you will create a Padlet account (for free) and then create a new Padlet page for the specific assignment you are working on. Share that link with students in your Learning Management System.
Students will click the pink plus sign in order to upload their image to the Padlet.
A little virtual post-it-note will appear once they click the plus sign. They then need to click the upwards arrow with the line under it and pick the image that they downloaded as the file to upload.
As students begin to upload their images, the Padlet will immediately display their work.
3. Students reflect on their peer’s work
Of course, there needs to be an accountability piece to ensure that students took the time to read their peer’s work.
I assigned students some slides from this Virtual Gallery Walk template in my Learning Management System.
I asked students to comment on the slides about the work of at least five other students.
When finished, students turned these virtual gallery walk reflection slides back into me via our LMS.
I also use the Spanish version of this template with my heritage students.
There are more slides you can use, but I narrowed it down to just four for this assignment.
How else have you used Padlet?
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