Curation

Collecting, filtering, connecting, and sharing the information you find

What is It?

Curation is the process of finding, collecting, organizing, and filtering of information into a refined presentation. For example, this is  the process museums go through in order to present relevant items and information for a specific topic. In this way, it is also a process of connecting and sharing.

How Can I Use Curation  in My Course?

Instructors are using online content curation tools in the classroom to:

  • create group activities
  • organize and disseminate new content as a sort of digital handout to students in online and flipped classrooms
  • collect and share professional reading materials with students
  • foster discussion about current events
  • encourage students to become both content creators and curators
  • connect to experts outside class and to the world knowledge base
  • critique information available on the web
  • teach students to curate social media
  • help students gain credibility and exposure
  • keep track of online research efforts
  • create reading lists
  • help students gain access to the ‘collective intelligence’ of the Internet

CurationiIllustration by  welenia studios

Considerations for Online Courses

As instructors, we are all information curators. How do you collect and share currently relevant content with your students? How do your students research and share information that they find with the rest of class? What tools do you use to manage or facilitate presentation of resources? Is it public? Can students access it at other times? In groups?

There is so much available information. Modern web tools make it easy for both students and instructors to filter information and contribute online discoveries to class conversations. Using free online content curation software, we can easily integrate new content in a variety of ways.

How-To Instructions and DIY

Here is a list of Links to “How To” Instructions:

Technologies

Pinterest  is a  pinboard-style social  photo sharing  website. The service allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections linked out to sites of origin.

Scoop.it  allows users to create and share their own themed magazines designed around a given topic.  

Diigo  is a social bookmarking tool that allows users to collect bookmarks, annotate them and share to groups or lists (more information available on Diigo here).

Pearltrees  is a content curation site that forms communities through sharing links through a visually striking interface.  

In Practice

The following are some real-life examples of how content curation tools are being used in education.

 Further Resources

Research Foundations