Wakelet is a 100% free online digital bulletin board that’s often referred to as the education version of Pinterest because it helps you easily organize mixed media resources you find on the web.
And it’s not just about curated collections, Wakelet can help you plan lessons, compile resources for students or design digital newsletters, and students can also use Wakelet to create digital portfolios, collaborate to gather mixed media resources, and more!
How to Sign Up for a Free Wakelet Account
First, navigate to Wakelet.com where you can sign up for a free account. To sign up for an account, click on the green Sign Up, It’s Free button.
Then, you can use your single sign-in login or sign up with email. Once you’re logged in, you’ll be taken to the main homepage, which you can customize as you begin to add collections, create bookmarks, and follow other Wakelet users.
What Does a Wakelet Collection Look Like?
Before we look at how to create your own Wakelet collection, let’s look at what one might look like. One place to look for pre-created collections is on the Community Showcase tab, which features loads of resources specifically made by and for educators.
In this “Using Wakelet in Our School” collection, you’ll notice that the teacher uploaded a custom image to their collection background, an image header, and a title for their collection.
You can also see a number directly beneath the title that tells you how many items are in this particular collection.
As you scroll down the page, you’ll see a series of curated items in a running list, all related to the topic of this collection. For example, there are embedded tweets, short blog-style writings, copies of .pdfs, and links out to websites. So the idea here is that this person curated a bunch of mixed media to create a collection about a unifying topic, “Using Wakelet in Schools.”
Use Wakelet for Digital Portfolios
Since Wakelet allows you to easily organize mixed media, it’s also highly useful for curating content for digital portfolios to showcase accomplishments. In the example below, the creator pulled together different certificates and digital badges they’ve earned, as well as links to video appearances and blog entries.
Wakelet for School Newsletters
In addition to collections and digital portfolios, you can also use Wakelet to pull together content for school newsletters.
The newsletter below is primarily text based, but of course if you had other media like a video of a student performance or link to a news article featuring a story about school sports, you could add those to your newsletter as well.
In addition to collections of curated mixed media content, you can also use Wakelet to organize lessons, which would be similar to setting up a Google Docs or Google Slides HyperDoc with links that take students to assignments, or other tech programs.
In addition to collections of curated mixed media content, you can also use Wakelet to organize lessons, which would be similar to setting up a Google Docs or Google Slides HyperDoc with links that take students to assignments, or other tech programs.
Search for Subject-Specific Content in Wakelet
If you’re looking for content about a specific topic, you can also use subjects as search terms. If, for example, you need material for a biology lesson, you could search “biology” and see what collections pop up.
For example, in the Biology collection below, you can see that the creator has pulled together some Edpuzzle videos about Biology, as well as websites, YouTube videos, and a Khan Academy lesson.
How to Bookmark Wakelet Content
If you like the content of the collection, you can save it to you bookmarks for easy access later by clicking on the three dot menu and selected “Save to bookmarks.”
Similarly, if you just wanted to bookmark an individual piece of media you found in someone else’s collection, hover over the thumbnail image and click the bookmarks icon.
There, you could choose Save to Bookmarks or you can save it directly to your own Wakelet collection if you’ve already created one.
How to Follow Other Wakelet Creators
In addition to bookmarking specific collections or individual pieces of content, you can also follow other Wakelet creators by clicking Follow next to their name. Following someone else on Wakelet will help you start curating your own personal collection of Wakelet users for your homepage so you can easily find them again.
Customize Your Wakelet Homepage
By bookmarking content and following other Wakelet users, you’ll also be customizing your Wakelet homepage.
For example, if you click Following you’ll see all the creators you follow, and clicking on their thumbnails will take you directly to all the collections they have made.
Clicking Bookmarks will take you from your homepage over to a page where you’re able to see entire Wakelet collections or individual resources you’ve bookmarked.
So you’re starting to see that just like an actual Wakelet collection, you can start turning your homepage into a customized, central location where you curate your favorite Wakelet creators, as well as your favorite pieces of content in your bookmarks.
At its core, this is really what Wakelet is about: finding resources you like and easily pulling them all together in a single, well-organization location.
How to Create Your Own Wakelet Collection
Now let’s look at how you can create your own collections in Wakelet. To add a collection, click on the green Create a New Collection button.
First, you’ll want to give your collection a name and a description.
Above the collection you’ll see an option to Add a Cover Image. Here, you can either upload an image from your computer, or choose one from the Unsplash Library.
Then you can choose for the image to show up as a Full Cover Image, as a Half Cover Image, or the Hide the Image.
Next, to start adding content click on the green Add button.
To add a website, just copy and paste the direct link to a page, which you’ll immediately see show up on your collection.
Then, you might want to add text above the website to explain what it’s about by clicking Text. There you’ll have some options for how to customize the text, and you can also add emojis by right-clicking to access the emoji keyboard.
Next, you can add images by uploading one from your computer or by using the internal Unsplash search tool. Once you find an image you like, it will show up underneath the webpage.
Another way to bring in mixed media is by clicking on Bookmark, which will allow you to pull up all the content you’ve bookmarked from another Wakelet collection. If you have lots of bookmarks for different pieces of content, you can filter your bookmarks and search for the specific content you need. Click Plus and then Add, and that bookmarked content will also show up in this collection.
Next, you can add PDF files to your collection by uploading files from your computer.
And by connecting Wakelet to your Twitter account, you can also search directly for relevant tweets and add those to your collection as well.
The Flipgrid app integration also allows you to record and embed Flipgrid Shorts directly in Wakelet. Here, you can record an instructional video in Flipgrid and then upload that to your collection.
With the YouTube app you can search for relevant YouTube videos and embed those in your collection.
Lastly, you can also pull in files directly from Google Drive or OneDrive by connecting Wakelet with your Drive.
How to Customize Your Wakelet Collection Layout and Settings
Turning on Easy Reorder Mode allows you to rearrange the order of the different pieces of media by dragging and dropping items to move them around.
By default Wakelet collections are arranged in Media View. For different options, click Change Layout, where you’ll see the option to condense your posts, to arrange your posts in a grid, or arrange posts in a Mood Board.
How to Share Your Wakelet Collection, Add Contributors, & Change Settings
When you first create a Wakelet collection it will be set to Private by default. If you want other Wakelet users to be able to search for and find your collection, set it to Public. If you’re planning to share your collection with students, but don’t want your collection to be found in open search, change the setting to Unlisted.
Then, if you want to allow others to add to your collection, click Invite, and there you can invite people you already follow on Wakelet to add to your collection, or just type someone’s email to add them as a contributor.
This would also be a way for students to be able to work together and create a collaborative collection for an assignment like a research project.
Adding someone as a contributor doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be able to edit and delete your work. When you click the Settings Cog, you’ll notice that you have an option to turn on the option to allow contributors to edit your work, but by default that option is turned off.
You can also choose to Add a Background Image to further customize the appearance of your collection.
Share Your Wakelet Collection with Students & the Immersive Reader Integration
Then, to see what the final draft version would look like, click Done and scroll down to check it out. This view is also what your collection will look like when you share it with students.
All published Wakelet collections include Immersive Reader next to any text you’ve included. When students click on the Immersive Reader icon, they can have the text read aloud to them, amongst other accessibility features.
To share your collection directly with students, click on the Share button, and that will give you several different options for how you share the link, including directly to Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams.
How to Use the Wakelet Extension
Lastly, installing the Wakelet extension for Chrome, Firefox, or Safari will help you easily organize resources you find online.
Once you have the extension installed it will allow you to add webpages, Tweets, YouTube videos, etc. to a pre-existing Wakelet collection, or create an entirely new collection, with a couple of clicks.
Conclusion & Resources
As you can see, Wakelet is an ideal tool for teachers and students who need to a way to take all the random pieces of information they find on the web into well-organized collections.
For my take on how to take a strategic approach to remote teaching, click here.
For a comprehensive look at how to use technology to personalize learning, increase engagement, foster creativity, and more, click here.
To read more about why I believe technology must be a central part of public education today, click here.
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