Claire Gardener (Senior Learning Technologist – Digital Learning Systems)
Greg Sutton (Learning Technology Support Officer)
New media available in posts
Padlet is an online notice board Derby University Staff and student can get an account just by going to https://derbyuni.padlet.org/ and choosing to Log in with Microsoft.
The notice board can have seven amazing different layouts. These layouts include a world map where you can attach posts to any position in the world, a timeline where you can place the posts on a timeline and move them around, and Canvas, which is like a police crime board, where you can make links between the posts.
There is also a new attachment picker with exciting new types of media that can be added to the posts. As well as being able to type posts, record audio and video straight from your phone and being able to draw straight on to the post, you can now also create screen recordings, embed YouTube videos, Spotify music and more.
Post Composer
Post composer if a brand-new future that enables you to compose more than one post at a time and publish them when you are ready.
Your unpublished posts appear at the bottom of the page you can click on them to open them and add more content or publish them. Or you can click on the ‘Publish all drafts’ button to publish them all at once. Note: If the leave the webpage before publishing the unpublished posts are lost.
Accessibility
To improve accessiblity Padlet now allows you to add a caption to visual media as well as the heading and the main text. This enables you to add a description of the image for people with visual impairments.
Chat has been discontinued.
The chat layout for Padlet has been discontinued. Padlet feel that this was not in keeping with their vision of the product. If you had a Padlet that used the Chat format it will have automatically been converted to a Wall layout. If you feel that other layout would be more appropriate then all Padlet boards can be changed to another format, with the change format button in ‘more options’.
Security
Padlet will now scan all uploaded files for viruses or other malicious content. While we have never experience and instance of Padlet being use maliciously at Derby it is good to know that we are safe in our use of Padlet.
Privacy
Padlets have the option to be shared with the whole institution. This means that all staff and students have the option to read and take copies of the contents of your Padlet, and possibly, add content too. When you have to set the security option ‘Org wide’ you should be aware that this content will be visible to everyone. There are currently 980 Padlets set to ‘Org wide’. If you think that there may be content on one of your Padlets that should not be publicly available, then please review your security setting. If you don’t want to share the content of you Padlet set the privacy option to ‘Secret’ or ‘Private’ or ‘Delete‘ the posts.
Padlet Gazette
If you want to keep up to date with Padlet you can subscribe to the Padlet Gazette and get regular email updates.
Support
If you need support with Padlet please contact TEL@derby.ac.uk or Phone 01332 591865
You can also visit our digital guides Digital Learning Systems Guides