Just this weekend I’ve finished writing a lead article for my SLANZA friends in NZ for their Collected Magazine. School librarians everywhere are interested in the same things, so I was pleasee to be able to contribute to an issue focused on Content Curation.
This is such a topical area of relevance to teachers and school librarians alike. What is critical for us, however, is that we cast our ‘information literacy’ lens over the whole activity of ‘curation’.
There is a great deal of rich content available for students and teachers that is collaboratively built and shared, including blogs, wikis, images, videos, places, events, music, books and more. Searching for content requires wise information literacy strategies and tools (embedded in the curriculum learning processes) to avoid being lost in the information labyrinth. Content curation is also about organizing, filtering and “making sense of” information on the web and sharing the very best pieces of content that has been selected for a specific purpose or need. It comes down to organizing your sources, knowing which of them are trust worthy, and seeing patterns. So for teachers and librarians it comes down to keeping up the pace in adopting these strategies and using tools to publish curated content in the sense of ‘reporting’ what is happening or what is relevant and new on a topic of research or interest.
Right on time to match the thinking time were two very different but interesting items which arrived in my Facebook and RSS feeds. You’ll want to visit both!
There’s a great set three sketchs about Curators and the Curated from the FueledbyCoffee blog, as a result of a recent conference. So many ideas juxtaposed in the sketches.
There’s also a different but interesting set of ideas presented in this slideshare presentation about Re-Envisioning Pedagogy:Educators as Curators.
Clearly content curation is a topical issue!
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Claudio.Ar
Related articles
- Introducing The Curator’s Code (swiss-miss.com)
judyoconnell.com 
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Hi Judy, we’re delighted that you are writing an article for Collected as content curation is something we are all wrestling with – which tools, what to include, how to go,about it and get the information to our students and staff. We look forward to reading it soon.
Warm regards on behalf of all your Kiwi friends and colleagues,
Fiona Mackie