Friday, July 9, 2021

Yay! I am 'Riding the Wakelet Wave!'


I have just completed the Wakelet course on the Microsoft Educator Center 'Riding the Wakelet Wave' https://bit.ly/2TU3jyF and got my badge! I didn’t realise one could do so much with Wakelet!

What is Wakelet?

“Wakelet is a free content curation platform that allows users to save, organize, and share content from across the web.” (Microsoft Educator Center https://bit.ly/2TU3jyF


Not only do you get a badge but you also get a certificate. 


What can one do with Wakelet?

I joined Wakelet a while ago (https://wakelet.com) and up to now have been using Wakelet as a curation tool. It is a great curation tool to be sure. But during the course I discovered that I can do so much MORE with it. At first I thought Wakelet was another version of Pinterest – but now I see it is Pinterest on steroids!
  • You can bookmark and create collections
  • You can share these collections with others
  • You can also create ‘spaces’ in your account where you can work with collaborators!
  • Your students can also contribute to your Wakelet collections.
After taking a look around Wakelet and listening to some webinars, I have discovered that there are so many different ways to use Wakelet! I thought I would try out the following next term.


1. Newsletters

I like the idea of creating a collection of some weekly student work to share with the parents. I could start off with a brief description of the lesson, take a few pics of the class working (from the back of course so that no faces are visible. I could then add a few examples of good work. Maybe that could be emailed to the parents.


2. Professional Development

I could get a few great ideas together for teachers at my school and give them the link each week. I am just making a note of Pam Hubler’s first such item for future reference: https://bit.ly/2UsIXfX

3. Research

This would be a great way to teach students how to research and keep a record of their research

Professional development and a sense of community


I love the community feel of Wakelet. I have applied to join their community. 

I am following them on Twitter @wakelet https://twitter.com/wakelet . Wakelet provides free weekly webinars which they advertise on Twitter #WakeletPD . If you go to the #wakeletwave there are so many ideas about using Wakelet shared by others.



Their YouTube channel https://bit.ly/36mDD0a contains loads of useful video content – short ‘how to videos’ and webinar recordings. Whew!

Read mode and immersive reader on Wakelet

This is quite amazing. This short video explains this feature.

 

Wakelet templates

Wakelet has a bunch of templates to help one create lesson plans, newsletters, etc. etc. Head over to https://wakelet.com/@Templates and take a look.



Well, there is so much one can do with Wakelet. I can’t wait to get started. I can really recommend the course on the Microsoft Educator Center, if you are interested in finding out more. 

Further reading

Holly Clark has an excellent blogpost on using Wakeles “How to Use Wakelet in The Classroom https://bit.ly/3eharwj

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