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The increasing role of curation in learning & teaching

By August 12, 2012One Comment

Curation has always been an important weapon in the arsenal of a student but never before has it been easier to curate, gather, organise and collate information on topics. It is going to change the way in which we teach and the way in which students learn and can access information.

Robin Good is bang on in his detailed article here on the topic when he gives his ten reasons why curation is transforming the education landscape:

    • An Overwhelming Abundance of Information Which Begs To Be Organized
    • A Growing Number of “Open” Teaching / Learning Content Hubs
    • Constantly Changing Information
    • Real-World Info Is Not Held Inside Silos
    • Fast-Food Info Consumption in Decline
    • Job Market Changing – New Skills Needed
    • Alternative Certification Systems Emerging
    • Teachers Can Curate Their Textbooks
    • Educational Marketplace Open to Thousands of Competitors
    • Demand for Trusted Guidance

Link: http://www.masternewmedia.org/curation-for-education-and-learning/#ixzz23HvVB897

The management of these curations is becoming increasingly easy too with different providers giving you superb tools to support with this. Not only this, but with students being asked to organise and sort the information that they gather whilst completing tasks linked to their learning, curating the information in to a manageable format is critical to success. Curation is a key skill that students need to have and the providers give you the tools to facilitate that. You have got web clippers, little shortcuts that sit on your toolbar in your browser which make clipping snippets from your browser straight to your curation tool of choice. Many of the providers have multi platform apps too to support you in your ease of curating your tools. Take Pinterest for example, one of the most popular curation tools. You have it on  your mobile device, your tablet, your browser and with social media tie ins too with Twitter and Facebook, it’s easy to get information on to your ‘board’ quickly, easily and effectively. Check this Pinterest board on iPads in education for example:

http://pinterest.com/techchef4u/ipad-lessons/

So how does this help students learn?

Well, it depends on what students are ‘learning’ and how you are managing your classroom and how they are either choosing to learn or being asked to learn. In my experience, thinking of the technology use as being cross curricular, having access to a curation tool means that students, wherever they are researching, finding out information, reading given articles or links, even if it’s simply notes (and Evernote provides itself here as a brilliant curation tool too – especially when you tie it in with some automation sites such as IFTTT (ifthisthenthat.com), curation can help a student to sort through the mire of information and put it in to some sense of order.

What are my top curation tools?

Pinterest

Evernote

Scoop.it

Pearltrees

What are yours? Would love to hear from you.

Mark Anderson

Mark Anderson, @ICTEvangelist. Click here to learn more.

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