I Am Not Giving Up on Padlet But It's OK To Explore Alternatives

"Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important."
Bill Gates

"Technology will never replace great teachers, but technology in the hands of great teachers is transformational."
George Couros

Padlet has become one of my favorite resources for collaboration and communication. I love the recent updates and we use it several times a week connected to classroom activities and HyperDocs. 

Padlet rather abruptly announced a change to their pricing structure on Tuesday, April 3rd. This has understandably upset many educators. 

Details are still sketchy about how Padlet will continue to support teaching and learning, but there will still be a free option with more limits. While I try not to rely on any single EdTech resource too much, but losing Padlet altogether would be difficult. I am not giving up on Padlet and I am hopeful that a plan and a pricing structure will be established that I can work with. 

While I am waiting on what's next with Padlet, I will begin exploring some new resources. 

• Wakelet - Share articles, videos, images, tweets and other great content with one link. Save them for later and create collections, called wakes, at any time. 
• Realtime Board - Online whiteboard for visual team collaboration. Add pictures, mockups, drawings, videos, sticky notes, office documents and Google Drive files on an endless canvas,
• Lino - lino is an online web sticky note service that can be used to post memos, to-do lists, ideas, and photos anywhere on an online web canvas.
• Google Drawings - Choose from a wide variety of shapes to create diagrams and charts. Matt Miller shares some great templates for Google Drawings in this post. 
• Grid View in Google Slides - Alice Keeler shares how Grid View can be used with students. 

We have also organized a Doc of additional Recommended Collaboration Resources for teachers and learners. There might be something here for you to explore? (Padlet is still there for now!)

If you have any additional suggestions or questions, please share in the comments below.