Content Curation for Teachers and Students

Content curation has evolved tremendously since the late '90s when every other website was titled "My Favorite Links"! It is amazing how many tools we have at our disposal to organize content. It is more important than ever that we are giving ourselves and our students places to organize relevant and important information.
With so many curation tools we are lucky to be able to find something that suits our own individual needs. I love pinterest because it is so visual, but found that uploading from the web sometimes feels too public and a little clunky. For this assignment I tried LinkHub which I found to be quick and easy to curate, but there seems to be an issue with the way they pull images from the sites you link to. I haven't had to tool successfully pull an image on its own, and stopping to upload one separately is time consuming. The tool is still in beta so I sent some feedback to them and am hoping for an update soon!

I loved the arguments made in the articles for the importance of teaching students the skill of content curation. These days, it is just as important that students learn how to suss out the validity of articles and websites as it is that they learn how to search for information. Businesses today are built on curating content that is relevant, interesting, and true. To have an effective online presence you must be constantly creating and sharing content with your global audience. Having the skills as a digital curator is something that will be a benefit to our students no matter which industry they decide to venture into. 

In addition to my LinkHub (which I hope to continue to grow), I am interested in trying out FlipGrid as a means of organizing video clips in my classroom. I regularly video myself giving a short lesson or demonstrating a technique and would love to have a library of these videos for my students to access whenever needed and also for them to add content and share techniques with each other. 

In addition to FlipGrid, I am hoping to try either LinkHub or Diigo with my students; though I am unsure at this point in what capacity I'll have the chance to use these tools. 

I loved the infographic that so clearly explains the process of curation and how to really set it apart from simply collecting a bunch of links on a page. 


My (work in progress) LinkHub can be found here: Ms. Smith's Art Hub

Happy Curating! :o)


Comments

  1. Karen McGrathAugust 11, 2017 at 4:46 AM

    Carly you point out so many important things! There are so many tools to choose from that it can get overwhelming! I always try to encourage teachers to think about using only the tools that make sense for their needs and what works well for their students. As you mentioned loving the visual display of Pintrest, as an art teacher that tool makes so much sense for you! I also love that you are willing to try things in beta and realize the importance of giving feedback to these new tech companies- In my experience they are very responsive to the needs of teachers when teachers send feedback.We played around with FlipGrid in class the other day and had some fun! I'll be interested to hear if it is a tool that can meet your goal of having all your instructional videos in one spot! I'm so glad you are part of this class! Thanks for all your contributions!

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