New feature: Activity Collections

This fall I've been working on a new site feature called Activity Collections. It's been something I've been wanting to make for a long time, and came as a frequent suggestion over the last year or so.

As the name implies, you can now create lists of activities based on any theme or categorization that you like. For example, you could make a collection for good warm-up activities, vocabulary review activities, a progression of activities that you use to introduce a grammar point, or things that you want to try out for your classes next week. The curation and ideas are up to you!

You can make a new collection by going to the creation page. When you look at an activity, there will be an "Add to collection" link under the Thumbs Up button. You can then add the activity to one of your collections, or even create a new collection from the Add link. You'll see a link to your collections on the Dashboard now in a revised section called "Your content."

You can also order the activities in the collection by going to the Edit page and assigning each activity a number. In addition, you can add a note to explain why the activity is in the collection, or remove it from the collection by clicking the "Remove" checkbox and submitting the form.

This feature follows a general philosophy I have in place of "privacy by default." When you create a collection, you're the only one who can see it, but you can edit the collection to be visible to everyone if you like. I feel like it's important not to surprise people with what they share online.

My goal for this feature is to help people curate the large amount of activities on the site (over 2200 now, as I write this) and help people find what they're looking for. I'm sure people will have some very creative uses of the collections, so I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with! Please let me know what you think!