My Take
Padlet allows you to create an interactive bulletin board and share it with students in just minutes. Students add notes to the board, which has a number of visual theme and color choices. This is a terrific website for group brainstorming, collaboration and mind mapping.
The real-time interactivity really ups the engagement level for students. The screen can become crowded with overlapping notes, but the ability to download to a PDF cleans it up nicely.
How I Use It
I have been using it as a collaboration tool, a summarizer, and a brainstorming facilitator. It is so quick to set up and easy to share, either via a link or embedded in a wiki or website, that prep time is minimal. Students love it, and no user name or password is required for them to add their ideas.