Sometimes You Need a Life Raft When Riding the Wakelet Wave

When I hear about a new tool in ed tech I often need to find my why or bigger purpose before using it. At ISTE last year there were rumblings of riding on a Wakelet wave. I was not sure what that meant, but it piqued my curiosity. The conversation continued in the #ditchbook chats. I spent some time exploring Wakelet, which is a tool to curate resources from a variety of places. You can keep your collections public, unlisted, or private. I decided to create a Wakelet profile to share with other educators. I was looking for a way to keep all my resources in one place. This was my answer. I was not sure what to put on it though.

I started with curating our #positivesignthursday posts to show students and educators who share tweets how far their reach is when spreading messages of positivity. This led to mapping where other schools were, integrating social studies skills. Then I went to a session with Randall Sampson at FETC, and his energy about sharing, collaborating, and curating drove me to create my own profile with an abundance of resources.

I downloaded the app on my phone to easily have access to add things I read to my Articles Worth Perusing collection on my profile. Then I heard about the Chrome Extension. I thought this would be perfect since I come across so many articles online. Now I had a way to easily curate and save articles to read later or to share with other educators. However, much to my dismay, every time I opened up a new tab on my Chrome browser my Waklet profile opened up. Some of you may love that! I did not want that to happen, so I went to my Chrome settings and shut off the capability for Wakelet to open up in a new tab. Sadly this disabled the whole extension.

I needed a life raft. I reached out to Wakelet on Twitter, as it is important to always ask questions when trying to figure something out. No one learns in a vacuum. They got right back to me with information in their help section to disable the new tab function while still keeping the extension. I learned it is important to view the help section when trying something new so I better understand how to use it. I also appreciate the quick response from Wakelet, showing they truly care about their users. Now I can happily add to my collections without having Wakelet open in new tabs all the time.

I encourage you to try Wakelet to curate your ideas. You will be happy you started riding the wave! My next wave to ride is one where students begin curating for their research projects.