What is Wakelet?

I was absolutely blown away by the Wakelet Community Week webinar that I attended last night. I didn’t even remember signing up but decided to listen in anyway. I was completely hooked when I realised a few minutes into the session that three of the professional-looking young presenters in the Zoom webinar were actually students! Coordinated (and clearly inspired) by their brilliant and energetic teacher, the charismatic youngsters gave an amazing presentation that showed the wide range of ways that different students use Wakelet.

I love how seamlessly other web tools integrate with Wakelet and how accessible it is no matter what device or browser you are using. The platform is full of handy features that are always being added and yet the interface is clean and minimal making it a tool that learners really can use to their advantage.

Just like Flipgrid, Wakelet harnesses the power of asynchrony in online learning by recognising that students learn at different paces and that kids don’t all learn in the same way. Wakelet empowers students to become part of productive teams but also to work in the ways that work best for them at their preferred pace.

How can kids log in to Wakelet?

Wakelet allows you to sign up for an account with them if you’re over 13 years old. You can also sign in with Facebook, Microsoft or Google accounts. It’s possible to collaborate on a collection without an account by using a QR code, text code or web link that is shared with you by the collection’s creator.

What can students use Wakelet for?

• Create collections of web-content related to personal interests

• Keep a catalogue of their work

• Look back and see their progress and growth over time

• Develop a professional digital presence

• Set up a section for CV/Resume

• Curate a digital portfolio to evidence the claims on their resume

• Bookmark useful resources for later

• Share useful resources with others

• Receive assignment details and web content from teachers

• Return school assignments to their teachers

What can I add to my Wakelet collections?

Here are the types of web content that you can add into your Wakelet collections at the moment:

• Buncees

• Instagram posts

• Tweets

• Text

• Youtube videos

• Weblinks

• Pictures

• PDFs

• Documents from Google Drive or OneDrive

• Flipgrid videos

Who can see public collections on Wakelet?

Kids can choose whether to make a collection Public, Unlisted or Private. Public Wakelet collections can be seen by anyone on the internet even if they aren’t a Wakelet user. Public collections also appear on your Public Wakelet profile.

Who can see unlisted Wakelet collections?

Unlisted collections can only be seen by those who have the link to it. This means that kids can share collections with their teacher or their classmates remotely without making it completely public. This is especially important for younger users and students posting photos and personal information.

Who can see private collections on Wakelet?

Private collections are only visible to the student who created them and they must be logged in to see them.

Kids can change the layouts of their collections by choosing between Media View, Grid View, Compact View and the newest option: Mood board.

What does the Wakelet extension do?

The Wakelet browser extension lets you easily add web content to your Wakelet collections without leaving the webpage that you are on. For example, a student watching a video on YouTube can click on the Wakelet browser extension icon to quickly add the video to one of their collections. If you’ve used the Pinterest extension, it’s a similar idea but isn’t limited to images. With the Wakelet extension installed you can right-click on web links and click on Save to Wakelet to quickly add a link to a collection

What are Wakelet Spaces?

Wakelet Spaces are Wakelet’s brand new way for users to separate their collections according to the areas of their lives. Students could make a Space on Wakelet for school-related collections and another separate Space for personal collections. They might even want a separate Space for a special project or Spaces for content collections relating to any groups that they are a part of outside of school. For example, Wakelet Spaces could allow students to have separate Spaces set up for their school collections, family collections and personal interests. Wakelet Spaces, one of the many new features being added all the time, will allow for real-time collaboration between users.

Sections, Collections and Sub-collections

Sections help students to organise their profile in different ways easily. Sections could represent different accomplishments or areas of student’s lives for example.

Collections are a bit like folders which contain content that’s all related to a certain theme or for a certain project. Inside, collections look a bit like Pinterest boards (especially with the Mood board layout). One example shown in the Webinar was a collection made up of family recipes that several students had collaborated to create.

One student ambassador for Wakelet presented a collection of quotes that he had saved because they inspire and empower him and even showed us how he used a Wakelet collection to showcase his own podcast along with the appropriate show notes and links. Impressive!

Click here to see a collection I made on Wakelet!

A sub-collection is another fairly new possibility on Wakelet and is basically just a collection within a collection. Sub-collections can be used for teachers to receive work back from students when students want to submit a collection of items that they have put together. The teacher might ask students to submit their collections as sub-collections to her collection of student submissions for a certain class.

Which platforms and tools does Wakelet work with?

OneDrive auto-saving as you work and Immersive Reader assistance for viewing content are yet more ways that Wakelet’s platform is made even more student-friendly. The Texan students and teacher pointed out that the integration with Google Drive makes transitions easy - for example when a student graduates they can easily take all of their content with them instead of losing it when they leave their school. Integration with Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams means that students can easily share items from collections to online learning platforms and teachers can share assignments and tasks over multiple platforms.

Wakelet seems like the perfect minimal but functional place for kids to grow their digital presence and develop their information literacy skills. Kids can work in whichever way suits them best and can curate the content that interests them most. They can collaborate as part of a team or gather private collections relating to personal interests or aspirations. It's a safe online environment where our young people can harness the power of the internet and maximise their learning. 💪🏻✨

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