The hardest part of teaching—or leading meetings—is sparking engagement. Getting people to engage enthusiastically with something new can be tough. It’s especially challenging if people are overwhelmed, super busy, or just tired.
As we aim to stretch people’s thinking in a new direction, tools are just one part of the overall picture. But they can help. Last week I shared five tools for creating learning paths, interactive lessons, and new kinds of digital notebooks. Today’s follow-up recommendations focus on creative engagement.
You don’t have to be a teacher to find these resources for opening up participation useful. If you lead a team, run meetings, or collaborate with colleagues, you can benefit from these tools.
Padlet: Inspire Creative Collaboration
Padlets are digital bulletin boards where people can post comments, links, voice recordings, or short videos.
How it works: Set up a board with a topic or a template. Start with a blank grid, map, timeline, discussion thread, or image gallery. Participants can use their own devices to add notes, documents, images, or comments. Or they can use Padlet’s built-in recorder to add audio or video.
How you can use it: Build a board to accompany a live, collaborative lesson, event, or meeting. Or have people contribute to it asynchronously. You can also use it as a showcase for exceptional work or as a space for peer collaboration.
How I use it: I find Padlet useful for group brainstorming, icebreakers, and online learning activities. For remote classes, I’ve used Padlet to collect questions before class and for team-building collections—gathering people’s favorite songs, books, and snacks—to help us get to know one another better. I’ve also used Padlet as a more visual, welcoming version of an online discussion board.
Who it works for: It’s easy to use, so most people jump in without any training. Padlet works at all levels. I’ve used it with graduate students and colleagues, as well as for mid-career training. It’s popular in elementary and high schools, too. It’s one of the best tools for getting people to build on each other’s ideas, rather than passively consuming content.
Kahoot: Add Fun to Learning
No other teaching tool generates as many smiles and laughs as Kahoot. It turns quizzes into playful learning games.
Why it’s so useful: What makes Kahoot especially engaging is the variety of question formats. Beyond standard multiple-choice and true-false questions, Kahoot lets students drop pins on images, fill in blanks, guess numbers, or sequence items in a list.
How to get started: Design your own quizzes or pick from a massive library of questions by teachers and organizations around the world, like National Geographic and NASA. People can play individually or in teams, live or asynchronously. You can share a link or show the game on-screen. People play on their own phone or laptop by answering questions and earning points.
How I use Kahoot: Sometimes I start class with icebreaker questions, or conclude a session with a review game. Occasionally, if I sense that students are losing energy or focus, I’ll turn class-related questions into a playful Kahoot competition for a change of pace.
New tip: Kahoot has a new AI assistant built in, so you can quickly convert text from any document or handout into editable quiz questions.
Pricing ranges from $3 per month (50 players at a time) to $19 per month (200 players). Kahoot’s pricing has gotten more complicated: Some quizzes and special features now require premium plans.
Alternatives: Gimkit, Wayground, and Blooket are good alternative game-style quiz platforms that offer fuller free plans for those on a tight budget. Genially also works well for classroom games, or try the free JeopardyLabs.
Craft: Organize your Materials
Craft is a surprisingly useful, underrated tool for creating and organizing notes and documents. Use it to develop attractive lesson plans, student handouts, syllabi, or collections of resources.
How to use it: Organize materials into neat visual cards that students or colleagues can click to explore. Add text, images, links, or tables to your documents. They’ll be more visually appealing than Microsoft Word or Google docs, or Apple Notes.
Sharing Craft docs: It’s easy to share Craft docs publicly or privately with a link, or export them as PDFs or Word docs. You can even transfer content directly to Ulysses, Bear, iA Writer, Day One, or other tools. I find it easier to use than Notion, Coda, or other pro tools I like, and I prefer the look of the shared docs.
Other features: Craft has a remarkably good mobile app for designing and viewing full docs. And while docs are private by default, you can now enable collaborative or even public editing so that people can work together on a project.
Pricing: Craft is free with a content limit, or $6 per month for unlimited use. (I include Craft as part of a bundle of pro tools that paid Wonder Tools subscribers get access to for free).
Bottom line: Consider Craft as a new, flexible place to make, organize, and share documents, especially if you’re drowning in scattered teaching materials.
