Into the Driver's Seat

by Richard Byrne

"TodaysMeet.com is a completely free service for hosting backchannel discussions. Over the years I’ve used it in a variety of ways including as a real-time discussion during a classroom viewing of a video, as a tool for quickly polling my students, and as forum for students to anonymously ask questions. "

by Richard Byrne

Padlet (formerly known as Wallwisher) is one of my favorite tools to use to have students quickly share ideas, questions, and multimedia notes on one page. Until today all of the notes that were added to a Padlet page appeared wherever a visitor double clicked. You can still use that free form format, but now you can also use a chronological format that Padlet is calling "streams."  Streams places all notes into a chronological order based on the timestamp of when each note is written.

by Richard Byrne

"Back in January I published a guide to using backchannels in the classroom. Shortly after I published that guide Wallwisher changed its name to Padlet. This weekend I updated the guide to include the Padlet name as well as some updated directions. The guide includes ideas and directions for using Padlet, Socrative, and TodaysMeet. You can download the guide here and view it as embedded below."

by Richard Byrne

"Over the last two weeks I've introduced a lot of teachers to using Padlet, TodaysMeet, and Socrative in their classrooms. All three of these tools can be used as backchannel and informal assessment tools. I've written about various ways to use each of these tools in the past. (Click here for TodaysMeet, here for Padlet, and here for Socrative). Here are some of the key benefits of using backchannels in your classroom. "

by Richard Byrne

"This afternoon at the Texas Library Association's annual conference I gave a short presentation about backchannels and informal assessment. Some of you may have seen the Padlet wall that I posted here for a few hours as a part of that presentation. During the presentation I mentioned three ways to use Padlet in schools. Those ways are described below."

by Daine Quirk

"Giving students the right tools and opportunities to process their thinking, ask questions, brainstorm ideas, and present their work are all part of the learning process in an interactive classroom.  Here are some tips and related tools to get you started."