padlet logo

Padlet is a digital bulletin board that you can embed into your Canvas course content for student use. It's is a great way to promote student-to-student interaction, which is part of regular and substantive interaction requirements for fully online, in-person hybrid, or live-online hybrid courses. Padlet is a fun resource for your in-person classes, too!

Padlet allows students to posts brief messages with images, video, URL links, and more! It's a nice alternative to Canvas discussions in that it allows for interactivity in a less formal, more media-rich format.

Accessibility: Padlet boards are broadly compliant with WCAG Level A--please see Design Format Options below to learn about the 3 board designs we recommend for best accessibility. Video and audio created in Padlet are automatically captioned; the ability to edit these captions for full compliance is on Padlet's roadmap. You can read their accessibility standards and access their latest VPAT report.

Southwestern College has a site license that allows our users to make an UNLIMITED number of Padlets for FREE! This includes faculty, staff, and students.

Sign up for Padlet
Create a Padlet
Share Settings
Embed your Padlet into Canvas
Import Existing Padlets
Copy a Padlet

Sign up for Padlet

Make sure you are signed out of all other Gmail accounts, including YouTube.
Log in to the MySWC Portal.
Then, log in to Padlet through https://swccd.padlet.org, signing in using the "Continue with Google" shortcut.
- SWC is a Google School, so being logged in to MySWC will help authenticate your account.
- When asked to choose your account, select your college email address.
  - If you are using your own computer, you may see your personal Google account in the "Choose an account" window as well.
  - If you are on a general use computer and don't see your SWC email address under Choose an account, simply select "Use another account" and enter your SWC email address.

And you should be off and running! Move on to the next tabbed section to learn how to use Padlet.

Create a Padlet

Once you have gained access to the Padlet dashboard, select the "+ Make" button to get started!
Padlet dasboard highlighting +Make icon

Selecting "blank board" will let you choose your format, or you can explore the gallery below it.

Design Format Options

Padlet offers six main formats. These are the three that are most accessible for students:

Wall
Grid
Wall with Sections enabled (allows posts to be placed in sections)

After your format is selected, the "Settings" panel will appear on the right side of the screen. This is where you'll customize your Padlet.

Padlet Settings

Here are a few key settings to ensure a quality and accessible learning experience. You'll access these from the Settings menu--select the gear icon on the right side of your Padlet board to get started.

Title: This is the name of your Padlet.
- You may wish to indicate the specific course in the Title if you'll be using a similar Padlet for multiple courses or sections.
- Also, if you're using Padlets in specific units, weeks, or modules in your Canvas course, then placing those in the name will help you keep track of Padlets in the future.
Description: Include your posting directions here. Be sure to put them on your Canvas page as well--not just in Padlet. This is for greater visibility and so students using a screen reader will be able to follow posting requirements.
- Include directions for posting, and you are likely to address questions like these as well: How many posts are required? What about responses (aka comments)? Can/should students use images, video, URLs, etc? Are there due dates?
New post position: This will be selected as First by default. Please leave this setting in place. There's nothing to adjust, but please be aware of this setting requirement as you create Padlets.
Comments: Toggle this on to allow students to respond to their classmates' posts. You can also enable reactions, such as liking, voting, and starring.

Other Considerations

Ask students to include their names in their posts: Padlet posts will appear as anonymous unless students have a Padlet account. No need for them to open an account; just make sure to instruct students to include their name in the post, either as the post title or at the end of their post.
- Padlet is not integrated with Canvas Grades, so if you are offering credit for a Padlet activity, you'll need to make sure you know whose posts is whose in order to award points.
- If you want students to be able to use a Padlet anonymously, that's fine, too! It can be a great way to collect feedback and have candid conversations about sensitive subjects.

When you're all done setting up your Padlet, close the Settings panel and we'll move on to sharing your Padlet.

Share Settings

You've created your Padlet (yay!) and it has all sorts of great directions and is accessible to students. There's one final step to be aware of...

By default, Padlet has set Sharing permissions to "secret" which sounds kind of counter-intuitive, but that's the correct permission that allows students to make posts when you are planning to embed the Padlet into Canvas. Also, students will be able to "write" as a default setting as well.

So you actually don't have to do anything on this step, since Padlet has done the work for you. Hooray! Just a heads up not to go in and change the Sharing settings.

So now you're ready to embed your Padlet into Canvas, which you'll learn about in the next tabbed section . . .

Embed your Padlet into Canvas

Once you're done setting up your Padlet, you'll want to share it with your SWC students. Do this through the Share icon in the top right corner of your Padlet.

Select Share from the menu bar.
Select <> Embed in your blog or your website.
Copy the embed code by selecting "Copy padlet embed code"
In Canvas, make sure you're in Edit mode.
After placing your cursor in the content area location where you wish to locate your Padlet, select the "Embed" icon from the Rich Content Editor toolbar.
The embed code window will open up; paste your Padlet HTML embed code in the text box and select "Submit" to close the window.
You have now completed your masterpiece.

If you're HTML brave, you can also go into the HTML Editor in Canvas (or the and manually edit the display size of your Padlet product:

padlet - change size

The width should stay 100% so it will adapt to student devices, but adjusting the height (for example, from 608 to 908) can help place more Padlet content on the page in Canvas.

Alrighty! You should be all set to use Padlet. The remaining sections of this page may be helpful later:

Importing Padlets: If you already have a Padlet account and want to import your existing Padlets into your SWC Padlet account, visit our next section, Import Existing Padlets to Your SWC Padlet Account, to learn how this is done.
Remaking Padlets (copying): If you want to know how to copy and re-use Padlets so you have multiple copies for multiple courses, then learn how to copy (remake) your Padlet in the Copy a Padlet tab.

Import Existing Padlets to your SWC Padlet Account

If you already have a generic or "vanilla" Padlet account (that's Padlet's lingo for a basic, non-upgraded account), you can import your existing Padlets into your SWC Padlet account for the sake of consolidation.

Open the options menu by selecting your account name at the top right of the screen.
Select the "Import" link from the drop down menu.
You'll be asked to log in to Padlet, meaning your other, original Padlet account. Enter your other login information and you'll be logged in to the "vanilla" account. How can you tell? You should see a series of other Padlets, and you'll see a gray Upgrade button.
Leave the browser screen open with your "vanilla" account and open a new browser with the swccd.padlet.org account.
You should then see a message at the top that says "You Are Importing Padlets from Padlet.com for," as well as an itemized list of Padlets you have created in the "vanilla" account.
Select the Padlets and click the pink Import # padlet(s) button to bring your "vanilla" Padlets into your SWC Padlet account.

To learn how to copy Padlets so you have additional copies for other courses, take a look at the final tabbed section: Copy a Padlet.

Copy a Padlet

And for the future . . . yup, you can make a fresh copy of a Padlet to use with a new group of students. There's just one thing to remember: once you are inside the Padlet you wish to copy, select the "Remake" icon in the top right corner ("Remake" is the word Padlet uses for "copy.") That's it!

padlet - remake

All you need to do now is update the name of the Padlet, but all other design elements and settings will carry over. Select the Remake button after you've updated the Title and you're ready to roll.

padlet - remake settings

For a detailed walkthrough of the "Remake" feature from clicking the button to embedding in Canvas, see How to Remake a Padlet.

Before you click "Next," please work through all the tabbed sections on this page.