Wakelet is a new, free ed tech tool that I think you should take a hard look at. It allows teachers (and students) to save and organize online content in any way you want. You can easily embed articles, videos, Tweets, podcasts, images, and pretty munch anything with a URL into a Wakelet collection. Why does this matter? Because with all of the information available to us today, it’s more important than ever that our students practice good content curation. Below are some ways you can use Wakelet in and out of the classroom.
Assignments
Educators are using the tool to set assignments for their students across many different subjects and courses. The students search the web to find relevant pieces of research and content to create a story or a narrative. They can add social media posts, videos, images, podcasts, and articles, as well as their own notes, which makes it the perfect platform to tell a story with content to back it up. You can see an example here.
With a Wakelet project, students are usually graded on the strength and depth of their research, and how well they have managed to create a narrative in their collection.
For Research Projects
It’s a great way to teach students the importance of research and encourage them to showcase information in a modern, logical, and visually engaging way. Their bookmarks can be organized and easily found using Wakelet’s filters. The tool can also be useful in helping students make sense of their research and get the big picture, as well as the details. Here’s an example of a Wakelet used for a research assignment.
Portfolios
Another use for students and teachers is using Wakelet as a portfolio. They can save all of their work and achievements into one place and showcase it to the people that matter the most. This can include any published articles (for journalism students), photographs, podcasts, videos, and even assignment documents. They can effectively create a digital CV using their Wakelet profile. Here’s a good example of a journalism student’s profile.
Share Tips and Resources with Others
In addition, if you’re a department head or an instructional coach, you can use Wakelet to create collections of related resources to share with your peers. Everything is easily organized and ready to use. Here’s an example of a collection by a kindergarten teacher that she shared with other K teachers and parents.
You can create a free Wakelet account with an email, Google, or Facebook account. Saved items can be reordered and text can be added to each of them. Collections can be kept private or shared with the world. There’s also a Chrome add-on as well as an iOS app. It’s all just so simple!
Some of the writing for this blog was done by James Davis with Wakelet.
