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The Modality Effect and Wakelet Templates

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Wakelet is an amazing (and free) tool for content curation for both students and teachers. To make it even better, there are fabulous templates available showcasing innovative ways to use the resource in your teaching, learning, and leading. There is also a modality effect that makes non-linguistic representation easier to achieve in your classroom. In this blog entry, you will find a host of inventive ways others are using Wakelet in the classroom.

Update (01/2021): Be sure to read about the all new Wakelet Templates that appear in this blog entry.

What Is Wakelet?

Wakelet is an all-purpose digital pinboard or social bookmarking site that makes it easy to add a wide variety of content to it. If you can link to a resource, then you can add it to Wakelet. This makes it a versatile, simple tool even for the technology-challenged educator. Here is a list of some of the content you can drop into it. Be sure to check out my Wakelet About Wakelet to see how it works.

  • Website addresses
  • Text
  • YouTube videos
  • Tweets
  • Bookmarks (in Wakelet)
  • Images
  • PDFs
  • Google Drive documents
  • Screencastify video recordings

If you like tools like Pinterest and Pocket, then you’ll love Wakelet. During the first week in October, 2019, Wakelet enhanced their feature set with Mood Board (see video below). Educators can use the Mood Board feature for many purposes, such as a:

  • Curated social wall for events
  • Reflection board for students during and after lessons
  • Way for project documentation
  • Visual, equitable, and collaborative group project tool
  • Digital, visual content blackboard
  • Virtual book clubs gathering space, digital maker space and school library tool (e.g. book talks)

And since Wakelet is completely free, and planning to stay that way, you know it will get only better.

Group Contributions Made Easy

Working on a big project that requires group collaboration? No problem; partner with other educators on your team to contribute to Wakelet. You can all add content, even if they don’t have a Wakelet account. This makes adding information and ideas to a shared Wakelet easy to do.

Contributors do not need an account to add to a Wakelet you create. Think about it. This means your under-13 year-old students can contribute to a Wakelet. And you keep editing control.

Explore my Wakelet collection, Templates for Wakelet:

Now, before you disappear down the rabbit hole of the Templates, let’s take a quick look at accelerating student growth.

Multi-Modal Learning with Wakelet

Think of Wakelet as a serving plate for great ideas in multi-modal format. Video, audio, PDFs, images, and text characterize non-linguistic representation. That’s important for many reasons, among them:

The modality effect refers to how learner performance depends on the presentation mode. Improve learning when you present textual information in enhanced mode. That is, when text includes auditory format, and/or visual materials. Visual materials could include a graph, diagram, or animation. Source: Visible Learning Meta  X database

According to Universal Design for Learning (UDL), non-linguistic representation is a must. Multiple representations ensure information is accessible to all learners. It also makes content easier to access and comprehend for many others. The use of Microsoft’s Immersive Reader to make text “playable” with all text content is powerful. It transforms Wakelet into a powerhouse for processing text as audio with picture dictionary and language translation (shown below).

See how Microsoft’s Immersive Reader, built into Wakelet, transforms embedded text.

This instructional strategy (modality effect) accelerates student learning. It enjoys a Hattie Effect Size of .55. This is great because non-linguistic representation is so important; text can’t cut it alone anymore. Wakelet works as a digital mixing board, a plate where you, as the teacher, can organize content.

Wakelet Templates Explode in January, 2021

Templates can kickstart your thinking as to how to best organize content. In January, 2021, Wakelet announced a new feature, Wakelet Templates.

wakelet templates

Wakelet Templates comes with a wide variety of templates you can explore. For example, check out the categories:

Categories include entry and exit tickets, portfolios and resumes, and ice breakers. You can also see distance learning, collaboration tools. It’s a good start. In the meantime, here are some other templates educators have created.

A Few of My Favorite Wakelet Things

Ready to see how other educators are creating templates for you to use? How about ways that educators are teaching with the content creation tool? Here are five fun ways Wakelet is being used.

1) Reading Logs

Dr. Ruth Okoye introduced me to Kristina A. Holzweiss’ (@lieberrian) Wakelet as a way to conduct reading logs. Kristina includes instructions and various resources to get you started. You can create a template for your own students that makes it easy for them to record their reading activity. Some of the information to collect includes what they read, when they read, and how many pages are read each time. It’s also a great way to summarize what was read.

For fun, you might want to take advantage of this Reciprocal Teaching template I created to encourage student readers. Students can use online audio recording tools (e.g. Vocaroo Online Voice Recorder) or Screencastify for webcam recording, to post their answers to reciprocal teaching sentence stems. The link can then be posted in the Wakelet.

2) Newsletters

Many educators, including librarians, are embracing Wakelet as a newsletter template tool. Kristina Uihlein Holzweiss does a wonderful job explaining how she created the first newsletter template below, School Library Media Center Newsletter, September 2019. You can watch her video explanation via the 2020 TCEA Convention Facebook group. Find several newsletter templates you can copy for your own use online.

3) Research reports

One of my favorite templates is this sample research report about polar bears. Imagine how taking a chemistry lab report and putting it into the tool would make the process easier for the teacher to grade. Students could use the template, fill it in, and then submit it to the class assignment Wakelet when complete. This works well for other content areas, too.

As you can see in this example, the work features teacher instructions for students. What might they look like for your classroom?

4) The All About Me Wakelet

Whether it’s All About Me for students in English or Spanish class or a Meet the Teacher template, you can make it easy for students to share a little about themselves using the tool. Research shows that building teacher-student relationships has an effect size of .72.

The relationship teachers have with their students dictates the impact they will have on their students’ achievement.


When there is a positive teacher-student relationship, students feel safe and there is a strong bond of trust within the classroom. Students are not afraid to take risks and understand that making errors are all part of the learning process. Students are more likely to feel positive about school and have a greater chance of developing a true love for learning. (Source: Teacher-Student Relationships)

Breaking the ice with students early on and building that bond of trust can begin with a simple Wakelet.

5) Create Copy-Friendly Content

Ready to jump into template creation? Don’t be afraid to use this resource for digital breakouts, station rotation activities (e.g. Types of Cells), and green screen ideas for your classroom. You won’t regret adapting Wakelet for use in your classroom in simple, powerful ways that enhance learning.

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hands in the waves with a hand outstretched to them to save
Google Tips and TricksiOS Tips and TricksMicrosoftOnline Tools and Apps

Wakelet to the Rescue: Backchannel and Twitter Chat Archiving

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

There are two common challenges we face as educators, no matter what you do. Classroom teacher, school administrator, or instructional coach — you face these same two challenges.

The first challenge is how to archive your Twitter chats. Imagine being able to capture Twitter hashtags featuring classroom critical information. Instead of losing information to the continuous scroll, how can we save it? Or how about curating content for a campus show-and-tell?

The second challenge is how to set up a safe space for backchannel chats. Providing the ability for your students or your staff to share ideas and thoughts is a powerful learning tool.

In this blog entry, we’ll explore both of these aspects of Wakelet that you may be unfamiliar with. Ready? Let’s get started.

Did You Know?

You can now save Flipgrid videos direct into a Wakelet Collection! The Wakelet developers have integrated Flipgrid’s new Shorts Camera into Wakelet to help bring your stories to life! Learn more via this tweet. (Updated 9/4/2019)

Wakelet for Backchannel Chats

“Wouldn’t it be neat if we had a tool that worked well for backchannel chats?” I remember asking the question a few months ago when Today’s Meet went offline. In spite of my best search efforts, I couldn’t find any solutions that worked well. I ended up settling for Padlet’s backchannel, but it feels clunky and not worth the effort of setting up. The good news is that Wakelet makes it easy with its access code feature.

Step 1: Create Your Wakelet

You can add some descriptive text and include a short link. You must use the one Wakelet provides, but you can also make your own with a URL shortener. You can see this “Class Academic Chat” Wakelet online here.

Step 2: Set the Visibility

Set the visibility of your Wakelet to unlisted, as shown in the image below.

Step 3: Get the Contributors’ link or Code

Once you have your Wakelet ready to share, get the Contributors’ link. This link includes a special code you can share with others. This link, which is also available as a QR code, makes it easy to get your K-12 or adult learners into your class chat.

Note: If you are logged into Wakelet via your browser, you will not see the ENTER CODE. To get around that, either 1) log out of Wakelet, or 2) open an incognito/private browsing window. Also, if at any time you need to generate a new link and code (like I will with this particular chat), you can use the link shown.

Step 4: Invite Others

Instruct others to enter the code for your Wakelet, then enter their name, as shown below. If you are in an environment where sharing the link is difficult, ask learners to open up their browser. Then, have them go to the Wakelet.com page. At this point, have them click on ENTER CODE in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

Once learners click on ENTER CODE (as shown above), then they can enter the top secret access code that makes them into contributors, as shown below.

After selecting the JOIN button, then they will be invited to enter their name as shown below.

At that point, they are ready to begin adding content to the Wakelet Class Chat.

Step 5: Ask for Participation

Once your learners are in the Wakelet chat, they can click on the plus symbol. Each contribution displays the student’s name or the one they entered. Here’s what the add content bar looks like.

The plus symbol will empower them to do any of the following:

  • Paste URL – You can ask students to replace the text imported from the website by having them enter their own rationale for adding the site or why it is relevant to the conversation.
  • Text – Add text or contributions
  • Image – Add an image
  • PDF – If learners have a PDF document on their device, they can add it.
  • Drive – Add content from Google Drive.

Isn’t that incredible? When done adding content, participants SAVE AND EXIT. This commits their changes to the class Wakelet, making them visible for all to see. If they want to add new comments, they can click on EDIT COLLECTION. This will let them add more remarks before they SAVE AND EXIT again. They can also choose to CLOSE out without making additions.

Now, one other neat feature is possible. Participants have the ability to add content, but cannot make changes. That is, they are unable to change the background images, the display of the Wakelet itself. Only you can do that as the organizer or teacher.

Tip: Once the content is in Wakelet, don’t forget that every text entry has the power of Microsoft’s Immersive Reader behind it. Yes, that means that text can be read aloud to students who need it.

Want to see it all in action? Watch this short YouTube video tutorial  (alternate link) I made for you.

Curating Twitter Chats and Tweets

This aspect of Wakelet slipped past me at first. While I knew Wakelet had the ability to embed tweets into its flow as bookmarks, there’s more to it. As an instructional coach or facilitator, you need to curate content for K-12 or adult learners. And that content should include resources and ideas from the Twitterverse.

Capturing tweets is difficult, but Wakelet makes it easy. As you can see in the two images below, click the plus symbol and then the TWITTER button. Note that this content bar is different than what you see as a contributor when participating in a chat. You have MORE options available to you.

After that, you can add tweets from a particular hashtag or user. In the image below, you can see that one can multi-select tweets from a hashtag, in this case, #pblchat.

Wakelet to the Rescue

As you can imagine, Wakelet makes powerful options available to you. I hope you will find these two features worthwhile. I had not explored them until a recent conversation with Wakelet’s Misbah (@Wakelet). What a joy to learn about such awesome, free (no-cost) tools for educators. In addition to creating content-rich collections of curated goodness, you can use Wakelet for much more. Stay tuned as we continue our exploration.

Bonus Tip: Embed Content

Want to share your backchannel chat or twitter curation efforts on another website? Wakelet embeds easily into Microsoft OneNote, Google Sites pages, Google’s Blogger, and traditional websites. This makes it the perfect tool for capturing student insights and sharing. You can embed content by using the embed code Wakelet provides. Misbah also points out that you can print the QR codes to existing collections and then paste them into books, magazines, or around your campus to give people MORE information.

But wait, there’s more! Did you know that you can save Screencastify video recordings direct to Wakelet? Yes, it is easy to take those screencasts and drop them right into your favorite Wakelet through the Apps feature.  Here’s a video overview of the options available:

*This post was updated September 4, 2019.

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wakelet
Educational TrendsMicrosoftOnline Tools and AppsSpecial Needs

Twitter Takeaways: Wakelet for Content Curation

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Content curation gets easier with Wakelet, a tool that’s kicking up a twitterstorm. Let’s take a quick look at some of the exciting ways it is being used.

Explore the buzz on Twitter with these quick takeaways. Be sure to catch up on past Twitter Takeaways.

Get Up to Speed

Are you new to this tool? If that’s the case, you can get up to speed quick. First, get an account and then the Wakelet Chrome Extension. You can also watch this video intro to the extension. If you want more videos,  check out the how-to’s in Wakelet’s tutorial videos.

wakelet

Photo Credit:Rachael Mann (@RachaelEdu)

Kristie Matthews makes connections between Wakelet and content curation. Be sure to peruse Paul West’s Wakelet ebook. It’s the A to Z guide on Wakelet features, extensions, collaboration tips, and more. And, if you enjoy using Wakelet, you may want to become a Wakelet ambassador and share all the Wakelet goodness with others.

Did You Know?

If you are a Microsoft OneNote user, you should be aware that you can now embed wakelets into OneNote pages. This makes it easy for students to access Wakelet content. See how it works below. All you need is to copy-n-paste the address to your favorite wakelet into a OneNote page!

Image Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Education-Blog/Immersive-Reader-is-now-available-in-Wakelet/ba-p/746538

Connecting the ISTE Standards

At a recent TCEA Lunch and Learn, free for TCEA members, I highlighted the Wakelet wonder. Why? There’s a clear connection between content curation and the ISTE Educator Standard, Learner: “Create and take part in local and global learning networks.” In this way, you will pursue professional interests. Content curation is one of the ways you can use global learning network (a.k.a. social media) and Wakelet fits the bill.

wakelet

Get a copy via Paul West’s ebook

What you may not know is that the ISTE Student Standard, Empowered Learner, is similar. It advises students to build networks. This includes making online connections with other learners and experts. One way that learners of all ages can show the power of their connections is via content curation. As an educator, you’ll want to check out some of the ways you can use Wakelet.

Takeaway #1: Wakelet Works with OneNote

Fans are discovering that this powerful tool has made OneNote embedding its collections easy. Watch this dramatic video that captures the new experience:

Tip for Chrome and Edge Chromium users

1) Copy the Wakelet collection website URL/address.

2) In OneNote, right-click your mouse and use the Paste > Keep Text Only.

You may have already seen how OneNote works as a great tool for students to capture and share content. Now students can continue to embed even more content in the form of Wakelet collections.

Takeaway #2: Immersive Reader Support in Wakelet

A July, 2019 development now means that Microsoft’s Immersive Reader enjoys support in Wakelet. Not familiar with Immersive Reader? Here’s a quick overview:

Students with learning differences such as dyslexia using text decoding solutions. It includes support for emerging readers through features like Line Focus and Picture Dictionary. Immersive Reader support is included in all Microsoft tools, such as OneNote. Learn more about it online.

Here’s what Immersive Reader looks like in Wakelet:

Takeaway #3: Gamification and Scratch

With content curation efforts, we often miss the great content others are gathering. Here’s one such set of awesomeness from Carol McLaughlin (@missmac100). See her collections on gamification, Scratch, math visuals, and more.

wakelet

Takeaway #4: Microsoft Learning Tools

The incomparable Mike Tholfsen gives us yet another Wakelet collection. This one focuses on Microsoft Learning Tools. It is a “collection of training, PD, blogs, and videos to learn about Microsoft learning Tools.” It also includes information about the ever-changing Immersive Reader.

Takeaway #5: Effects of Climate Change

In this enthralling Wakelet, you will see the work and images relevant to climate change. It’s incredible what you can learn from primary sources. Consider Ogunyemi Olakunle Joshua. He is a geographical information systems (GIS) speaker and forest biometrician. Joshua shares the image below.

wakelet

Reading the curated collection featured in Wakelet, you’ll learn exciting statistics and assertions such as the one below:

We lost 150 billion work hours world-wide due to heat exposure in 2017. The cost of keeping people safe will increase as heat increases.

Takeaway #6: Twitter chat Archives

As you may have seen from the Effects of Climate Change example above, it is archived a twitter chat on the subject. Many are turning to Wakelet as an easy way to save their twitterchats. For example, David archives the #K12PRchat using the tool. The focus of the twitterchat was visual storytelling.

wakelet

Bonus Use

Another way some are using Wakelet includes as a campus or classroom newsletter. See this example summing up the week at Donalda School with images and PDFs embedded. Since Wakelet makes it easy to add Google Docs in a collection, it’s no wonder that many are flocking to it.

This blog entry was updated on July 12, 2019 with new content.

 

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Explainer videos
Educational TrendsGood TeachingOnline Tools and Apps

Five Reasons Why Explainer Videos Help Teach Generation Z

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

As Generation Z will be highly responsible for shaping our future, along with other young generations, teachers need to aid and support their social and academic development. From what we know about Gen Z, they are quite different compared to previous generations. Therefore, we must think of tools to fill the spots available for content reception to benefit both teachers and students.

Videos are no newcomer when it comes to supporting lectures; however explainer videos in general have exponential benefits that will support content retention. Five specific benefits include catering to the short attention span of the average Gen Z student through concise videos, offering ease of accessibility and mobility, providing visual learning opportunities, offering increased simplicity, and easily providing a variety of information and a simple way to update content.


This video has been created with mysimpleshow.

1. Simple videos for short attention spans.

A student’s attention span might, excessively speaking, decrease as I am writing this. After all, the average attention span of a Generation Z individual is about 8 seconds. Massive amounts of information expressed in long texts is outdated. What explainer videos offer is a condensed version of a lot of information. It’s the main message, the key points, or the announcement of something in a simple and video-based way. Thus, we combine the different needs of Gen Z with short, image-heavy, snackable information. Explainer videos ideally are around one to three minutes in length, with two minutes as the sweet spot, meaning high engagement.

2. Mobility and accessibility

Thanks to fluency across five screens, explainer videos allow viewers to access the videos anytime and anywhere. This enables students and teachers to free themselves of these “hunger slots” during the day when no information will reach them. Thanks to the accessibility, explainer videos can be assigned as homework or played throughout the school day according to teachers’ and students’ assessment. Thanks to technology, you can bring the screen to any setting required, taking the classroom anywhere you like across the globe. This supports the preference of an independent working environment.

3. Visual learning

Adobe has conducted research that indicates that more than 50 percent of students and teachers assess “watching” as the most effective learning source, followed by online research. Explainer videos combine both of these factors, as videos are watched and simultaneously searched online, and search results likely contain additional valuable information. Extra bonuses are the audio aspect for aural learning, as well as possible subtitle options that assist in improving reading skills.

4. Simple messages

In addition to accessible, shortened information nuggets, let’s talk about simplicity. As Gen Z students process information faster, they require understandable information bits so the content remains memorable. Explainer videos pick up on the concept of apps using images, keywords, attractive design layouts, user friendly interfaces, and simple sentence structures. This further leaves space for creativity when considering students and teachers creating their own videos.

5. Variety of information and ease of updating content

Explainer videos are not bound to a subject – the possibilities are endless! A teacher likely doesn’t have time to write an entire textbook, but can create or search for suitable explainer videos, reducing working time immensely while simultaneously ensuring students a deeper understanding of the content. Another great benefit here? Updated information. Not only is most content in the videos rather recent, but it is often easier to adjust, revise, and update information in comparison to textbook updates, as video creation tools are online and thus accessible 24 hours of the day, seven days a week.

Generation Z has the future among them, and it’s time teachers support these students through technology – explainer videos to be exact!

This is a guest blog by Finja Kruse. Kruse is a teacher who has worked with children of different ages. She also  writes blogs and creates videos for simpleshow video maker. She has experience with different educational tools and is engaged in creative writing activities in school. You can contact her via LinkedIn.

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student writing, digital, notebook
Content AreasEnglish Language Arts Reading (ELAR)MicrosoftWriting

Nonfiction Student Writing Notebooks

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“My notebooks,” shares Aimee Buckner, author of Nonfiction Notebooks: Strategies for Informational Writing, “make me reflect on what I do as a writer and as a teacher. Sometimes I reflect as I reread, and other times I reflect when I just look at the stack.” As a writer myself, I find Aimee’s point spot on, since having notebooks helps me organize the vastness of ideas and then put them into context. Through the use of OneNote, Diigo.com and IFTTT.com, student writing notebooks can become powerful ways to organize and share the work of writers in the classroom.

“By sixth grade,” points out Australian educator Tony Stead, “children will have spent 84% of writer’s workshop composing personal narratives, stories, and writing from prompts.” Wow, read that again. Now ask yourself how much of the reading that you do as an adult is personal narrative and/or stories? If you’re like me, you’ll see that 90% of the writing I devour as an educator and adult is non-fiction. In fact, most adults read non-fiction MORE than fiction.

Aimee agrees with Tony’s emphasis on non-fiction writing as “a huge genre.” Based on Tony’s well-researched point, as well as Aimee’s, it is critical that students both consume and engage in informational writing. Our students CAN produce non-fiction and hear (via podcasts) and learn the language of non-fiction. Aimee points out that “informational writing,” which she also dubs “explanatory writing,” can have a profound effect on students’ ability to write better.

Let’s review some of the key points from Aimee’s book Nonfiction Notebooks: Strategies for Informational Writing:

  1. Notebooks help students organize what they know and use what they know about.
  2. Notebooks help students “grow their writing and strengthen their ideas” by finding other texts they love and studying how those are put together.
  3. Notebooks can help students plan out organization, flow, and key ideas of their writing.

The writer’s notebook, usually a beautifully-decorated work of paper, stickers, glue, and decorative items that students use to track their ideas, like footprints by fairies in a evergreen forest budding with half-formed observations, is central to our writing process. While many students in classrooms sporting Chromebooks and iPads see the value of word processing their content, tools like OneNote often go unused.

Let’s quickly review the power of each of these tools and then apply them to the key points in Aimee’s book:

  • OneNote.com is a digital notebook, allowing you to organize an almost unlimited number of notes organized into sections in notebooks. You can even create, as Aimee describes in her book, “stacks” of notebooks. You can easily add tags or one-word descriptors to each note. OneNote apps exist on every platform, from Android to iPad to iPhone, as well as on Chromebook, Windows/Mac laptop, or desktop. In short, OneNote works on everything. Furthermore, you can audio record/save/email content (pictures, audio, video, and, my favorite, text) into a notebook. Students can easily use OneNote to engage in collaborative conversations and “group share” about their writing.
  • Share OneNote notebook entries to an RSS feed. Want to spotlight student notebook entries? View the notebook via OneNote Online and bookmark it with Diigo, a social bookmarking tool. Diigo provides you with access to an RSS feed that you can publish and share. This makes automating sharing of bookmarked student writing via IFTTT.com simple and easy.  If you so choose, only those notes tagged with “published” can be shared via the RSS feed. Once you have the RSS feed, you can embed it on any website, as well as auto-publish it to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets.

 

Let’s explore these two digital tools in the context of Nonfiction Notebooks key ideas that I highlighted above:

As non-fiction writers, it’s important to find texts that can serve a dual purpose. Many of these texts are not to be found in print magazine and books, but rather, online in their digital equivalents. As a result, students, and you as a teacher, need an easy to way to “clip” content and then share the relevant excerpt with others. Using OneNote 2016 (which is free on all devices), as well as the OneNote clipper, writers can organize content they find in notebooks.

This organization is important because it enables students to make choices about topic and genre and then they can capitalize on the benefits of content curation with their peers.

Here’s how it works:

Ashleigh, an eighth grader, wants to write about her experiences raising a calf. She begins collecting information about raising cows to see how others have approached the topic, clipping certain selections that she likes or wants to refer to while writing her own how-to for inclusion in her piece. She knows that her audience will be other teens, but also a general audience. She mixes her own experiences in, as well as records audio interviews with other friends who have had their own experiences. Ashleigh snaps photos of her calf and attaches pictures she’s taken of her calf to illustrate the steps one must follow. All of this content — pictures, audio, and text — ends up as separate notes in her “How to Raise a Calf” notebook on OneNote.

Rather than having this process of content curation dwell in ignorance and darkness, Ashleigh’s teacher, parents, and friends have been able to follow her growth as a content curator and drafts at her own How-To in real time. This is because Ashleigh is able to choose what to share from her “How to Raise a Calf” notebook online. There is no copy-and-paste, double the effort. When Ashleigh has something to share, she uses Diigo to bookmark the page and tags it with the word “published.” Then, the IFTTT.com recipe picks it up in the Diigo RSS feed and shares it to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets, including blogs. In this way, others can see what Ashleigh is reading and clipping. Furthermore, Ashleigh’s writing piece is auto-published online as she revises. Parents can subscribe to the RSS feed generated by Diigo.com.

As Ashleigh begins to organize a variety of pieces, she can create new notebooks and organize them according to how she and her teacher have decided makes the most sense. This collaborative process enables Ashleigh, and students like her, to “plan out organization, flow, and key ideas of their writing” as an interactive dialogue between teacher and student, student and peers, writer and the world.

One of the key components of student writing is sharing and publishing. While there are many tools for organizing our writing, OneNote + Diigo.com + IFTTT.com make a winning combination for empowering students and teachers. Specifically, it enables them to pull back the veil between that moment when ideas arise from the chaos when those ideas are shaped and informed by information and then blended into a draft of non-fiction writing. Making this living, ever-changing draft of writing, updated as it happens, available online makes them a winning combination. Of course, there are other ways to accomplish this and those approaches are also worth exploring.

Join the ongoing TCEA Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) SkypeChat via your mobile device or online. Explore and share concepts at the intersection of teaching, learning, leading, and technology!

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