Collaboration Tool: Padlet or Talis Elevate?
What is Padlet?
Padlet is a tool that allows posts or content to be added to a shared online space. Multiple users can collaborate in the space and items can be commented on and engaged with.
What is Talis Elevate?
Talis Elevate is a collaborative annotation tool that builds conversation directly onto content across multiple resource types. Students and academics can annotate or comment on course material and engage with each other.
Should I use Padlet or Talis Elevate? Which is better?
You don’t just have to pick one. As Helen Lovatt from the University of Nottingham explains, using both Padlet and Talis Elevate provided her with mechanisms for many types of engagement in her classes. Both platforms encouraged students to participate in an appropriate way depending on the solution that was selected.
Helen told us that she liked that both allow for anonymity as well as engagement between students. They have been useful and easy to use during online classes this year, but Helen plans to continue to use them for face-to-face sessions in future to ensure a more inclusive for all students, appealing to diverse ways of learning and participating.
How can Talis Elevate and Padlet be used together?
Helen told us: “Talis Elevate was used for more substantial exercises such as a sustained debate or a deeper learning activity with the material. Activities that were done in Talis Elevate often formed the bulk of the live session. With Padlet students can write bigger pieces of text, which made it great for brainstorming and introduction activities to get them warmed up for working on a text.”
Helen teaches on Latin language modules which can be difficult for students to engage with, both Talis Elevate and Padlet have been useful as students can participate online in an anonymous way, removing any barriers related to lack of confidence.
Typical tasks that Helen has done with students in each tool are:
- Brainstorming around a text in Padlet
- Collaborative translation using Talis Elevate
- Noting definitions in Padlet
- Deeper exploration of translation choices in Talis Elevate
- Discussion of primary material in Talis Elevate
- Translation technique comparison in Talis Elevate
To find out more about Helen’s use of Padlet and Talis Elevate, watch the 5-minute video below from our recent Teach Learn Collaborate Repeat conference:
