ThingLink and Padlet: Aeneas

These are two online resources that I've been meaning to try for a long time but only just implemented today with my Latin 1 class.  This specific lesson, although part of a lesson on the Trojan War and Aeneas, could be used with any character study or story summary.

I gave students several images related to the stories we'd talked about.  With their groups, they needed to create a ThingLink for two of them.  With ThingLink, they had to put in thought bubbles for what the characters were thinking about during that scene.  I used this one I had done as an example: 

ThingLink is free, but students did need to sign up for an account.

The next step was to post their images somewhere that was accessible to both me and other students.  For this, I created a Padlet page.  Padlet only requires me to have the account, so it was easy for students to post.  I helped walk students through how to post images (it's actually really simple, I promise!).  Once posted, anyone can view them.  Here's our class Padlet for this assignment:

Created with Padlet

I liked the ThingLink activity as an alternate way of assessment for this topic.  It's relatively easy once students know what they're doing (and now we can do it with later myths!) and it's nice to pull in technology whenever I can.  Students seemed to enjoy the activity itself.

Padlet also works really well for getting students to submit digital assignments - it's easier for me than managing a list of links or a million emails.  It also looks decent :) and lets students view each other's work.  The only issue is that the URL for your current Padlet board is usually pretty long and difficult to easily get to students.

- Frau Leonard