Wakelet Ambassador Nisha, shares her story of how she discovered Wakelet, and how she’s now using it to unlock collaboration in her students!
At a panel session themed “Inspirational leadership in education” at Microsoft Edu Days event held at Gurugram, India, I learned more about Wakelet. During this event I got an opportunity to listen to Mr. Teijas. He discussed the What’s and Whys of Wakelet. All the while, I couldn’t stop thinking about exploring Wakelet.
Once the session was over, the first thing I did was visit the Microsoft Educator Centre and earned the Surf the 5 C’s with Wakelet beginners badge. It’s the perfect way to get started with Wakelet!
In December, I took training from my friend through skype. After training I started my journey in Wakelet. Wakelet is a highly effective teaching approach for inculcating 6 key soft skills among students i.e. Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Curation, Collaboration and Digital Citizenship.
To initiate the process, I introduced a topic to the class and divided the students into groups so they may work collaboratively on the sub-topics. The students were also sensitized about exploring the right e-content while taking care of the copyright issues and creative commons licensing. The purpose was to develop Digital Citizenship among the students so they understand how to create a positive online community.
The students started their team work. Individual team members took responsibility contributing as per his or her forte. All the team members explored the internet for the relevant e-content pertaining to the sub-topic assigned to their group through communication and curation, using Wakelet.
Then, students worked to figure out the solutions to the problem with Critical Thinking. Then they applied their Creativity with fellow students. The team leader added the group members as contributors to organize the e-content in the group Wakelet collection.
The students worked in collaboration on the common Waklelet collection created for the sub-topic assigned to their group. I was one of the contributors to each group collection in order to monitor the progress and also be a facilitator to the students during the entire process. All the collections were kept in private visibility mode for the development phase. Students presented their findings and learning through their Wakelet collections to the class!
Then, I bridged the learning gaps to conclude the topic. Later, the visibility mode of the collection was changed to public so that the wonderful work of the students may be shared across the community.
The session ended on a happy note as the students not only acquired knowledge about the topic, but also developed essential soft skills required for their future!
Nisha Rani, M.A ,B.ed (Social Science Teacher) ,Goraya, Punjab (India)
Twitter: @Nisha09934399
Wakelet : @Nisha56
Certified Wakelet Ambassador (15th Wave)
