The Importance of Curation

February 8, 2018

What is curation and why is it important? For me, in the context of an emerging educator in the digital age, it is about trying to keep some degree of organization with all of the online material that I find and have found. Often I will find a really good video or resource online one day and then have to spend hours searching for it again the next. How much easier it would be to curate all of that great material, and save it all in one place. It only seems logical to try and make some sense of everything that is out there, and to organize it together rather than to allow yourself to get overwhelmed. That way, you are better able to focus in on exactly what you are interested in. I think that the part that takes the most effort though, is getting yourself set up and in the habit of actually using the resources available to curate your material; that is where I am at right now.

Symbaloo was a curation website that was introduced to me last year, and brought up more than once again this year. It seems like a great tool to get into the habit of using, since it allows you to customize and organize everything that you come across on the world wide web. It is one that I really need to take the next step with, to begin to organize a page for myself with the hope that I can become comfortable enough with it so that I could also use it once I begin teaching. Having a place like a Symbaloo page, with all the websites and videos and material that you want your class to access will make it easier for everyone.

Pinterest is another website that I feel I need to get signed up for and to begin browsing. There seems like some great ideas on the site that you can save for a later date. And again, you are able to organize all of those ideas into categories. I know that this is a popular site, and from what I have heard from others, it is very useful for helping educators to get ideas.

Now I am going to talk a bit about a bookmarking site that I have begun to use again, and am really enjoying. This is Feedly. I have been using this site to keep track of everyone else's blogs from this #I4Ed class, but also to keep news articles and videos organized for me. I love that it automatically brings in the newest material as it becomes available, and that I can see it all in one place. It makes it so much easier to just sign onto my Feedly account, and then to flip through to get caught up on what I missed and to watch or read something that catches my eye. I am finding that I am going to my Feedly page more and more frequently when I am spending time on my computer, just to see what else might have been posted on there. It is a site that I will continue to use in the future as well to keep track of interesting pages.

- B