A common frustration from my colleagues in Issaquah and from many global educators on the Facebook and Twitter groups that I belong is how to put all of the instructional stuff together in a neat little package. How can I put all these great Ed Tech tools in one spot for my students, and perhaps, more importantly, how to get students to do the things that are assigned in order? Well, Wakelet and Flipgrid Shorts might be a handy solution for you!
Wakelet is an online tool where users can curate, organize, collaborate, and share. Best of all it works with ISD supported such as Microsoft Teams, OneNote, and Flipgrid. A Wakelet collection is visual and sequential to follow. A teacher could set one up with a title and learning objective, add some instructional videos (Flipgrid Shorts), include practice opportunities with real-time feedback (Quizziz, Quizlet, or Kahoot), and finish with a link to your assessment activity. Wakelets can be shared with a link in a weekly email, embedded into a website, posted to a teacher page on Clever, added to a Seesaw activity, or added to Microsoft Teams or OneNote. Best of all when you share a Wakelet and need to make a quick change you can do so without revising your original message; when you make the change on Wakelet updates will occur for your audience in real-time.
Ok, so Wakelet is a curation tool, for those of you who love Padlet, this is not a new idea. If the integration with ISD supported tools hasn’t piqued your interest, these two words might garner a little excitement: Flipgrid Shorts.
Designed just for educators, Flipgrid Shorts is a great way to give directions, send personal messages, or tell a story. And you can record them right from a Wakelet! You get 10 minutes of video recording that can pivot between your beautiful face, a whiteboard, a blackboard, images that you upload, stickers, text, and a few drawing tools. You can use any combination of these with the Flipgrid camera to create the content you want to deliver to your audience. These shorts are saved in your Wakelet AND in your Flipgrid account!
While playing around with recording “Shorts” I’ve learned a few tricks.
- Use the clear button. Upload an image that you want to annotate, mark it up, then hit the clear button before you record. When you start the recording hit undo each time you want to reveal the next mark-up. This will let you time your speech with your lesson perfectly!
- Mess up? Don’t start over, just clip off the part you do not like. You can easily trim from the front or back of the clip and add a new clip into your video wherever it is needed.
- Use stickers! The arrows are helpful and look very professional. Bad hair day? Throw a Flipgrid hat on your head. Late-night? Use one of the many sunglasses, even more proof this tech tool was made for educators.
Here is a sample video using all three of my aforementioned tips and a Wakelet that might spark some ideas for your classroom.
With the Wakelet Chrome Extension, it is super easy to add resources for students, yourself, or your team in just a few clicks!
Want to learn more? We have a Kyte course for Wakelet and our Ed Tech department has provided a few Flipgrid PD sessions and those recordings are available here. Of course, your Ed Tech TOSA is also happy to answer questions you may have about either of these tech tools.
BITS AND PIECES 