Sandra McCarthy introduces her students to social media through TodaysMeet.com as a way for them to communicate safely online. While the students engaged well with it, inappropriate comments were later made under fake usernames. Sandra then searched for an alternative and discovered Padlet, which allows for easier monitoring and moderation of student posts from within the classroom. She has set up Padlet walls for students to record take-home reading books and share interests, providing a safer environment for online communication.

1. My One Best Moment
Sandra McCarthy

2. My One Best Moment
• My best ICT moment revolves around
introducing my students to social media.
• I wanted my students to have a safe and
secure environment in which to learn about
communicating with others online.

3. Web 2.0 resources
• My first step in introducing students to social media was via
TodaysMeet.com.These rooms are free of charge and can be
created by anyone. In relation to privacy, access to these rooms is
limited to those who have the IP
address, www.todaysmeet.com/???? for the room you create.
• When a room is created it remains open for a designated time, you
can choose anywhere between a couple of hours and one year. I
generally chosen to have my rooms open for one week at a time.

4. TodaysMeet
• I usedTodaysMeet to introduce social media
and began using it for classroom activities
such as recording take home reading books.
and for students to respond individually to
general classroom discussion questions.

5. • This has allowed me to track what books
students have out each day.
• It has enabled individuals to have thinking
time and be able to answer questions
individually without having the answer called
out.

6. www.todaysmeet.com

7. • The bonus of introducingTodaysMeet.com to my students
was that they began communicating with each other
outside of the classroom. Students were saying hello to
each other, telling friends what they had for dinner. One of
the Mums even wished all the mothers a Happy Mother’s
Day via our room.
• My students were engaged withTodaysMeet.com. They
chatted to each other over the weekends and requested
that I have a room open for them to communicate with
each other during the school holidays.

9. • Todaysmeet.com has been an interesting
platform that has enabled conversations to
develop around their responsibilities and use
of appropriate language while
communicating with other people
electronically.

10. Challenges Faced
• As with many things a negative has arisen
from this positive environment.
• Recently I had students who chose to log in
under other peoples names and make
inappropriate comments.

11. • While the students were spoken to about this
being inappropriate it happened again and
the comments were causing discomfort for
those whose names were being used as the
logins.

12. User Friendly?
• Yes- todaysmeet.com is easy to use.
• It only asks you to enter your name, click on
join and then start posting your comments.

13. Editable / Monitorable
• As a college we have found that it is not easy to
remove unwanted comments and it is virtually
impossible to trace who the perpetrator was.
• Todaysmeet.com is an American site and there is
no facility for the room host to delete posts.

14. • Any requests for removing posts and/or closing a room
early must be done by email to the creator and deleting of
posts and room closures are done at their discretion.
• I did receive a reply to my request for
information, however due to time zone differences there
was a significant time delay.
• They were happy to close my room early after supplying
them details of the comments and the room address.

15. My Reactions
• These incidents left me questioning the use of
social media in my classroom.

16. • I decided that I would not generate anymore
todaysmeet.com rooms and thus the search
began, with the assistance of our ICT
department, for an alternative that provided a
higher level of monitoring, identification and
the ability to monitor and manipulation of
student posts from within the classroom.

17. Outcome
• During our ICT – SIT a new web 2.0 tool was
discussed, Padlet - http://padlet.com
• Padlet is a renamed, updated version of
wallwisher.

18. www.padlet.com

19. • After being shown around the features and
playing with making posts on a wall created
for the meeting I decided to create my own
login and have set up a page / wall to use with
my students.

20. How we use Padlet
• Student’s record theirTake Home Book titles.
• Student’s list their interests for Investigations
sessions (Walker LearningApproach).

21. www.padlet.com/wall/1sandra

22. www.padlet.com/wall/investigations1s

23. The Journey continues…
• I am excited about this next step in my
journey and my students journey in
developing the skills and responsibilities they
will need to be confident and safe web 2.0
users.