August 22, 2023: Meet USDLA Sponsor — Padlet

Hello USDLA friends — What fun it was to meet the leaders of Padlet at our 2023 National Conference. These popular vision boards offer boundless opportunities for creativity, organizing your ideas, and sharing content.

“If you need to build a daily schedule, create a lecture presentation, or lead a classroom discussion, Padlet is a beautiful way to do it.” explains Julia Carnes (pictured right), a marketer and content creator at Padlet who previously worked on the company’s customer support and success teams. You can find her singing to herself while folding origami cranes when she isn’t recording Youtube videos and planning conferences.

Scroll down for our Q&A with Julia, and also below, find our weekly “Research You Can Use” article about why our brains love products like Padlet!

On this week’s to-do list:

Register for our Free Friday Webinar on Aug. 25 from 1-2 pm Eastern: “Tapping into Tik Tok: Techniques for Teaching Today” with Shaunice Sasser. Learn more about Shaunice and this topic. below. Click here to sign up for this webinar, along with the following usdla.org/webinars:

  • September 1: “Global Educational Mentorship (GEM)” with Toni Hill, Olimpia Leite-Trambly, and Jane Miller.
  • September 8: “Where to Start with IDEAs (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility)? Understanding the Challenges & Opportunities!” with Rosemary Okoiti and Juliet C. Hart.

Public Policy: Let us know what you’d like to learn in our upcoming Public Policy webinar series by clicking here to complete the proposal form. Webinars are one-hour and include Q&A. Questions, thoughts, ideas? Send an email to committee chair Alexandra Salas: asalas@usdla.org.

We’ll be back in touch on Thursday with our weekly USDLA Brief. All the best! —  USDLA Communications Committee

Q&A with Julia Carnes of Padlet: “From your hobby to your career, your class notes to your final exam, your mood board to your runway show, Padlet helps you organize your life.”

USDLA: Tell us about Padlet — its history and goals for the future.

Julia: Padlet, formerly known as Wallwisher, was incorporated in 2012 by Nitesh Goel. Since then, Padlet has been used globally by over 70 million registered users. Those users have created nearly 150 million boards (called Padlets) filled with text, images, videos, and more. Our goal for the future is simple: we want to make the world a little more beautiful. Work doesn’t have to be boring and ugly. We believe that beauty will save the work—and the world.

USDLA: What have been your organization’s biggest challenges? 

Julia: One major challenge has been hiring enough people. To that end, we’re looking for a recruiter! We’ve also been challenged by getting the word out about Padlet. This is challenging because there is so much noise online, and we are at the whim of search engines and social media algorithms. We’ve been fortunate to benefit from a strong word-of-mouth effect so far. Now we are exploring more ways to introduce Padlet to new users and share updates with existing users.

USDLA: Tell us about your organization’s big wins and what you look forward to in the coming years.

Julia: One big win is Padlet Slideshow. With one click, you can create a slideshow from a Padlet. It’s effortlessly beautiful, and it’s very useful. Since we released Padlet Slideshow earlier this year, nearly 2.5 million people have created or visited a slideshow on Padlet. In the coming years, we will continue providing new ways to collect, organize, and present anything on Padlet. Slideshow is just one example of that. Just this month, we released 26 new features, including mentions, polls, and AI-powered content moderation. So, I look forward to seeing all the improvements we make in the years to come!

USDLA: As a sponsor to our organization, has USDLA been helpful in your efforts?

Julia: The USDLA conference was our first conference ever! It was a great first conference, and we learned a lot, which will inform our upcoming events. We also made quality connections at the conference, which has already resulted in discussions about new contracts and expanding an existing contract.

USDLA: How can USDLA help you, and other organizations, be more effective?

Julia: We need help knowing who to talk to. We need to know which schools and organizations are open to us, and we need to know who the key players are within those institutions.

Click here to learn more about Padlet:

Research of the Week: Why Padlet is so Popular

Using Padlet for collaborative learning: Research by Zhi and Su, 2015 — In recent years, teachers have recognized that Padlet is a useful tool to improve collaborative learning. Some of its advantages are it’s easy to use, offers instant collaboration (any student can see when anyone else is uploading something on the wall), multimedia (almost everything can be placed on the Padlet), and mobile (it can work on many different devices).

Padlet: The Multipurpose Web 2.0 Tool: Research by FWGU, 2020; Duke et al., 2013 — Connectivism is relatively new and underscores life-long learning. It is important to note that today, individuals seek to gain knowledge beyond formal education through skill acquisition, social and professional networks, and information access through technology explained that connectivism enhances student learning through knowledge and perception acquired through personal networks. Utilizing Padlet in the classroom allows faculty to expand their teaching practices beyond what is available in traditional online learning environments.

Online collaborative Padlet-mediated learning in health management studies: Research by Zheng et al., 2014; Malik et al., 2017; Park et al., 2019; Yadegaridehkordi et al., 2019 — Online collaborative learning (OCL) is a goal-oriented activity of a group of students committed to achieving a shared goal and creating new knowledge by learning interactively in a digital environment. This methodology has become widespread because of its many advantages. For example, studies show that encouragement of students’ engagement, high accessibility to the course material (Sukendro et al., 2020; Balouchi and Samad, 2021), extensive access to colleagues and instructors, and encouragement of interaction and collaboration among the students contribute to better learning outcomes (Ornellas and Muñoz Carril, 2014). OCL was found to add interest and to raise motivation to conduct research and study, and as such, to encourage the transition from passive to active learning and to encourage interaction and connection between the students through the sharing of the products of their study and new ideas, leading to greater social engagement and contributing to the development of higher-order intellectual skills.

Free Friday Webinar on Aug. 25, 1-2 pm Eastern: “Tapping into Tik Tok: Techniques for Teaching Today” with Shaunice Sasser

Presenter: Shaunice Sasser, Instructional Designer, Delta

About the webinar: In today’s digital age, social media platforms like TikTok have revolutionized how people consume and interact with content. There is great potential to leverage these trends to enhance the design of learning experiences in distance education. However, it’s important to consider the principles of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility when designing these experiences. We will explore how we can harness the power of social media trends to create innovative and engaging learning experiences that resonate with diverse learners.

In this session: We will examine the latest trends on TikTok and other social media platforms and explore how they can be adapted to ensure accessibility for all learners. Additionally, we will discuss how learning experience design can incorporate concepts such as micro-learning, gamification, and personalization to promote active engagement and knowledge retention for learners from diverse backgrounds. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for designing dynamic, effective distance learning experiences that prioritize inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility. As distance learning continues to gain momentum, keeping pace with the latest trends and innovations is essential while ensuring that learning experiences are accessible to all learners.

At USDLA: We know the importance of social media! Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn!