Wakelet for CPD

This has been quite a week with the launch of JoyFM and starting mentoring the Google For Education Google Coach UK Cohort. In both these spaces I shared Wakelet for CPD and it seemed useful so am blogging about it here.

Wakelet is and isn't what you think it is. Yes it is a kind of noticeboard that you pin useful treasures on. But it is SO much more too! I'm going to start with the Twitter integration.

Twitter has become a key part of my own professional development. Rightly or wrongly. For all its flaws Twitter is where I find new templates and new ideas. I magpie from other teachers all over the world and adapt ideas for my own teaching. Hashtags and communities that share are great for this. #ShareStuffSunday by @i_teach_things is a great way to see ideas from different education phases. The #APConnect community share great ideas from the FE classroom. #AmplifyFE alerts you to big news in FE. Not forgetting #UKFEchat. These are my key hashtags and the age/phase/subject will have their own too #CASchat and many more.

Twitter is also the place where I see academics sharing journals they have written. Just this morning I read a wonderful blog by an academic on unconscious bias of accents. This is my kind of CPD. Experts in their field sharing their work for us all to benefit. I love being signposted to a journal I've not read before. I enjoy reading a peer reviewed piece on a subject that sparks my own journey of discovery of a new perspective.

Twitter is the place where I meet authors of books. I hear about launch events. I see Twitter chats to launch pieces. I engage directly with authors. I then build a deeper understanding of the book they've written. I discovered the launch events for The Manifesto For Teaching Online  this book challenges my thinking so the launch events helped clarify some viewpoints for me. This book is now my go to text and informs a lot of my current work. Had I not been on Twitter I would never have heard of it.

So what about our colleagues who aren't on Twitter? I only joined 9 months ago and engaging on Twitter has provided me with a treasure trove of activities and ideas. How do we support teachers not on Twitter? Could we share what we find? Absolutely! This is where Wakelet wins!

When creating a Wakelet collection you can click +Apps and the Twitter icon. From here you can add in a Twitter handle or a hashtag. Wakelet then pulls through what it has found! That simple! You can then curate through its finds or bulk add them to the Wakelet collection. 

I recently did this for #APConnect21 and these are some of the highlights that capture the Wakelet feature. Staff who are on Twitter can see new names and faces to connect with. Staff who aren't on Twitter can see resources, articles and YouTube links to access Twitter CPD.

The new emoji reaction feature in Wakelet takes this to the next level. Staff who view your Twitter Wakelet collection can react with a thumbs up or a heart. Double curation can then happen. You curate the Twitter posts that pull into the collection and colleagues curate the collection you created by leaving reactions meaning that the next person who sees the collection can easily identify the go to posts.

Here I have made a Wakelet collection on #ShareStuffSunday. Step by step on the app, I described how to do it on browser above but here it is via the Wakelet app

Create a collection and click add an item, select add from Twitter.

Type in the hashtag or handle of who or what you want to pull in.

Curate which posts you want to add. Here I selected all tweets.

And here it is the collection created all ready for you to leave emoji feedback on! Wakelets can be shared via links, QR codes, Teams, Google Classroom and so many more ways. You can also invite contributors to your Wakelet. This way asking others who are on Twitter to run the hashtag at a different time. Or added contributors can add more emat to the bones and articles or resources that link to the Twitter posts shared. The possibilities are beyond my introduction here.

Ultimately, if you find Twitter valuable CPD for your subject and you know colleagues who aren't on Twitter, perhaps you could make a Wakelet to share some of the good stuff you see?

PS you can find me on Twitter @WhatTheTrigMath 😉

Home Schooling Part 1

I have been an educator for almost 10 years now. I like to think that I am OK at my job. I know what a good lesson looks like, I know how to check for progress, I can give feedback and next steps etc. Yet home schooling in lockdown has caused me challenges that I wasn't expecting. I expected some challenges in terms of managing content, it's not my age range specialty, obviously the relationship with my kids and them wanting to engage would be my main challenge. The last day at school I was given a huge pack of fun educational things to do at home. This wasn't useful. I knew how to make play doh in the microwave already. Now this wasn't school's fault, they didn't know what to do either, it was all very quick and sudden. 

So I dutifully created a login for the age appropriate teacher resource site and began planning some lessons. Whoa did I struggle! There was so much content. Sentence prompts, they look easy enough, I will begin with those. Cue 1587 resources on sentence prompts. How do I know which is a good task? How do I know my kids will be able to do it? How do I change it from portrait to landscape in this website? This made me think, how are other parents, non educators managing? It was very overwhelming.

I think that there is a wider problem in that we haven't learnt the skill of curation yet or it certainly isn't embedded yet in our ways. We teach the 6C's in education settings but as adults, leaders, educators of a different generation of when the internet first arrived, we haven't been taught this skill. Part of my job is to help educators create LMS content, Google Classrooms for example. All too often I see reams and reams of information in a stream, no topics, no structure. The educator has posted articles that they like, assessment tasks, slides from class, wellbeing updates, contact details for pastoral care...all good stuff but how does a learner access it easily, how do they find what they need?

In a social media world we are used to pinging a link, sharing something funny, it's easy. But as educators and leaders we need to adapt to a different skill set when sharing with people. We need to be explicit about what we want them to access. Google Classroom (disclaimer I am a Google Certified Trainer) has some great tools for this. Material posts are when you want learners to read something. Assignments are when you want them to do something etc. However educators need to use the topics tools too. A good place to start is always, admin tasks, pastoral information, exam information and then subject specific tasks. Learners can then navigate easier by clicking into the topics they need and then searching in a smaller area for the information they are looking for. 

Even with these tools staff still need to curate the content, it's not a case of sharing every article that you see. There's a saying, think before you click. We should extend this to think before you click the share button. Is it the best example of what you are trying to share? Does it add value to your discussion? Will the experience be enhanced by you sharing this content? Tools like Wakelet help with this. Wakelet lets you pop all your bits in to one place, all your websites, articles, infographics from the web and then you can trim your content down and curate it on Wakelet. Why not share your Wakelet board and your number 1 example? Let people view your collection of resources and ideas and then promote your best example. Surely that is a more positive experience than asking people to scroll through streams of posts?

So home schooling got off to a slow start, I struggled to plan and access the content, spoiler alert, there are further challenges ahead in my home schooling journey...SJ