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Here's how I'd speak out to the lecturer in today's scenario

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Here's how I'd speak out to the lecturer in today's scenario

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I would ask the lecturer to:
* Find a curating tool that she likes the look of (check it can be embedded in VLE for a semi-open solution which ticks uni boxes but gives some freedom).
* Play with the curating tool and use it for a day to complete a task or an artefact for use in teaching/research. Get familiar, buy into the solution for herself.
* Consider her course learning outcomes and objectives, and the assessment she has set. List specific skills or knowledge she wants students to develop.
* Check the chosen solution directly provides a chance to develop that knowledge/skill. List how.
* Look at any additional skills that are developed through the solution - link these to jobs and, preferably, jobs that her graduates want to go into and traditionally go into.
* Make a video - preferably showing her face, with her smiling and endorsing the solution, explaining why it works well, what they can do with it, and what skills and jobs it is good for. Explain in the video how to use the tech.
* Put the video on the VLE.
* In class, demonstrate the tech again, and ask students to bring in devices to try it out together.
* Show how the solution gives freedom and creativity for learning and reinforce using the tech with praise and encouragement. Constantly mention how studying with the solution will help to get a good grade, and explain that engaged students are typically the ones who come away with first class marks.
That's what I've learned today, and it's what I'll be doing when I get my students to use Padlet this term!

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How might curating with Padlet fit into a framework for engagement?

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How might curating with Padlet fit into a framework for engagement?

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I had an initial feeling when I read today's scenario that the big issue here is one, for whatever reason, of engagement - i.e., how much attention, curiosity, passion and interest the students are exhibiting. You're always going to get those who are extrinsically motivated, or who are studying a module because they have to or because parents are telling them to...but, really, most times you should be able to get passionate about what you're learning. The HEA tells us that we can create engagement by working in partnership with students. This diagram gives us a framework.

We need to get students involved in designing and developing, engage them in subject-based research; students need to be active in their learning and supported to help take decisions. We have to develop a sense of community, and be inclusive and reach out. If we do these things, we can spark engagement. I do think Padlet could be used to reach those aims, and so, we could increase engagement with this app.

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Framework for student engagement through partnership | Higher Education Academy

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This framework has been led by the HEA* to enable you to further engage students through partnership. The HEA regard partnership to be a relationship in which all involved are actively engaged in, and stand to gain from, the process of learning and working together.

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Whatever we do, we need to sell it and explain it.

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Whatever we do, we need to sell it and explain it.

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It's become clear that if we want students to study and prepare for tasks or assessments using curating, we'll need to sell it to them, and show them how to do it. I'm already working on a screencastify that I'm going to show to all my seminar groups this term.
I used to work in sales, and my main framework is one that explains the nature of communication...if I'm endorsing it myself (and have a good rapport with students), there's an increased chance the students will buy in. Educator enthusiasm is a big predictor of engagement! If you believe in your solutions, the students will too.

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Problem! I could not use Padlet for e-submission :(

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Problem! I could not use Padlet for e-submission :(

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I'd love students to do things like Padlets or Podcasts for assessment, but because they can't be put through Turnitin, you'd never be allowed :(

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How can we teach content curation, then, if students might need help?

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How can we teach content curation, then, if students might need help?

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The good stuff is later in the article, but it gives 20 good resources/tips for teaching students how to curate. As a bonus, I learned something about the characteristics of creative thought along the way - sounds to me like curation IS creative (and I think I've exhibited these characteristics in producing this wall!).

1. Fluency: the ability to produce large numbers of ideas

2. Flexibility: the ability to produce diverse ideas

3. Elaboration: the ability to add on to and embellish an already existing idea

4. Originality: the ability to produce uncommon, clever ideas

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At St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, Dr. Corinne Weisgerber is teaching a class on social and interactive media. In addition to building a Personal Learning Network of online mentors and experts they can use to supplement their Google searches, her students are required to "curate" the information they gather for projects the same way a museum curator would curate an art exhibit.

"I told them they would need to comb through the resources received through their PLN to discover the significant and relevant, bundle those ideas together, contextualise them for their audience, repackage them and share them through a social media platform," says Weisgerber. "In essence, I tasked students with creating the ultimate resource on a particular topic and to share it with the world."

Weisgerber also mentioned that the project has been, without a doubt, one of her most rewarding to grade. In terms of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives, curation covers it all, from lower to higher order thinking skills: labeling, naming, listing, organising, applying, judging, evaluating, analysing, synthesising-the list goes on.

It also provides us with a potential way to measure creativity. Guilford's (1968) analysis of the primary parameters of creative thinking includes the following:

1. Fluency: the ability to produce large numbers of ideas

2. Flexibility: the ability to produce diverse ideas

3. Elaboration: the ability to add on to and embellish an already existing idea

4. Originality: the ability to produce uncommon, clever ideas

We don't give much emphasis to Elaboration when we talk about creativity, but in discussing the curation process, it's clear that we should. Not only do Fluency, Flexibility, and Originality lead to creative expression-but curating, synthesising, and elaborating on the ideas of others has given us many new works of art, new inventions, new content, new artifacts, new appliances, new technology, and new ideas. Real innovation requires an ability to curate old ideas. You can't contribute something new unless you know what you're adding to.

But Weisgerber is ahead of the curve. Most of us are just starting to realise the importance of integrating curation techniques into our curricula. The truth is, as digital literacy becomes more and more critical to academic and career success, teaching content curation will no longer be a choice but a necessity.

What we call " information overload "-when the volume of potentially useful and relevant information available exceeds processing capacity and becomes a hindrance rather than a help-has only gotten worse in the near past. In fact, 90% of all the data in the world has been generated over the last two years. To put things in perspective, between the dawn of civilisation through 2003, about 5 exabytes of information was created. Now, that much information is created every 2 days.

"If we are not prepared for it, we can be force-fed by a very small amount of data (a unique video seen a billion times...) and even by false information, and let a vast amount of valuable data be wasted," says Scoop.it Co-Founder Marc Rougier. "Students of all ages must be trained to search, select, qualify (and therefore disqualify), then enrich with their own thought, and then use and share information."

Imagine receiving a graduate degree in "resource curation." In our age of digital content and information overload, I challenge you to name a more practical credential. Because content curation offers a clear path through the clutter of the digital world, it can help specialists become influencers and thought leaders in nearly any niche or industry. We must make students aware of the importance of information management, both in their daily lives and in their educational careers, simply because they won't succeed without it.

Where Do We Begin?

There are many definitions and uses of curation today, but a few common denominators should be considered before attempting to zero in on the goals of your own lesson.

1. Purpose: Curating traditionally involves organising and maintaining a collection of artwork or artifacts in a purposeful manner. The typical museum curator does more than group objects together at a whim; she selects and arranges them for accessibility, aesthetic quality, and historical or cultural context. There is always an element of intention in the curation process.

2. Sharing: Today's definition of curation also includes an element of sharing. The concept of social bookmarking, typically done through tools such as Diigo and Delicious, now falls within the category of curation as well.

3. Creation: Creativity does not necessitate total originality; it can also be based on remixing and creating existing content. Condsider remixes and mashups of songs or remakes of old movies. If these materials can be recycled and turned into art, then all digital material ought to reserve the same right.

4. Contribution: "If curating content is easy, you're doing it wrong," says blogger and creative strategist Joshua Merritt. "Just linking to something without any semblance of thought, or an attempt to make a cohesive point, or adding your own commentary or expanding on is, isn't curating. It's content spamming, particularly when done en masse." Curation needs to involve a unique contribution to a subject, something an audience will find valuable.

How Do We Teach Content Curation Effectively?

Once you've gained a solid understanding of what curation means and how it should be used, you can begin to teach others about it. But how, exactly? What specific habits should be cultivated in your students (and yourself) to make them effective curators of information?

1. Recognise the resource you already have. "Students are curators, but they don't know it's what they're doing," says educational technologist Naomi Harm. "They're sharing things out, but they don't realise what an educational impact they're truly making. We as educators need to set the stage for students to be more self-directed in how they curate this knowledge to extend their learning experiences." By tapping into kids' natural proclivity to curate, teachers can help them personalise their own learning.

2. Focus on goals. What are your goals around content curation? If you can't answer this question, don't bother continuing with your lesson plan. And, if your students can't answer it either, don't bother expecting quality assignments from them.

3. Demonstrate relevant and non-relevant sources of information. A fundamental part of digital literacy, understanding the difference between facts that further an argument and facts that don't is essential to practicing good content curation.

4. Encourage real-world problem solving. Knowledge becomes meaningful only when students understand how to apply it to the world around them. By asking thought-provoking questions, teachers can guide students toward using the content they curate to make a difference in the world. For example, students can collect information about a particular subject, then use it to raise awareness about a problem or injustice.

5. Introduce global collaboration. Digital content curation also opens the door for global collaboration between students and classrooms. Students from across the world can work together to create wikis, blogs, websites, Pinterest boards, and more.

6. Give credit where credit is due. Discuss when to quote a passage, when to mention a name, and when to call it your own.

7. Quality, not quantity. Quality is the number one downfall of ineffective content curators. A trillion feeds and handles and tools compete for audience attention every second. Always put quality first. Make sure you read (and digest) every piece of content you curate. If you retweet based solely on a title, you risk your standing and reputation.

8. Make a habit of sharing your opinion. If you are curating content from a wide variety of other experts and sources, inject your own commentary. Agree and extend on content that represents your own thinking, and challenge content that could be taken further. What value can you add?

9. Dig far and wide. As a consumer of information, you already have more content coming your way in a day than you can even begin to process. Look for unique perspectives. Scour for sources that aren't just the same opinions from the top publication in your industry.

10. Pull together multiple viewpoints from a handful of experts. Obviously, the more viewpoints you include, the more credible your resource. But also, highly effective curated content is more than just retweeting-it's about also creating new articles that pull together content from a variety of sources. The resulting article may often be better than the original, because it brings a breadth and depth to the topic that a single article might not have.

11. Understand what happens when you link to your sources. When you post a link within your blog to a blog post on another site, there are means by which they get automatically notified. If they pay attention and visit your site, they may end up deciding to promote your post to their followers or respond to your blog, driving further attention your way.

12. Treat curating like you are creating original art. Merritt makes the argument that This American Life, the nationally syndicated radio program hosted by Ira Glass, is a vehicle for curated content, since each episode is typically worth more together than each story within it would be if taken alone. "If two different people curate and distribute the same content, what makes the experience of your followers more valuable?" Merritt asks. "The answer doesn't have to lie in a single piece of content, but it must lie in the story arch of the greater body of work."

13. Use curated collections to create your own online (or offline) content. Let collections inspire you. Just as the same ingredients may be treated slightly differently by different cooks, resulting in a meal that tastes different, so too can you give your own version of someone else's collection a unique spin.

14. Use visual guides. Content curation starts by choosing the right type of content to use across channels. The best curated content is lasting,with regard to both subject-matter and presentation. Instructional guides, resource lists, industry definitions, and most non-journalistic writing are timeless content. But most visual representations do not fade with time, so vivid images also have important roles in content curation.

15. Make sense of your data. Making sense of your data can be as simple as choosing how you annotate the links your share, the presentation, or what you've left out. It can be writing a blog post using the links or summarising the key points in a presentation. But however you create meaning, it has to support your instructional and/or learning goals.

16. Develop an organisation strategy. Once you've found all the information you need, the next challenge is to organise it in an effective and meaningful way. Consider ways to enhance your content through the structure and presentation you choose.

17. Know what's timely and trending. Keeping up to date with current trends doesn't require a lot of time, but it does require being regular. Check your Twitter feed or favorite news page every morning, even just for ten minutes.

18. Recognise a catchy title. Not everyone will be as thorough as you when reviewing content. A lot of people will click on a link solely because of a compelling title. "As you sharpen your curating skills, you'll begin to figure out what separates great titles from good titles," writes Dennis Shiao, Director of Product Marketing at DNN. "If you come across a great article that has just a good title, consider changing the title text when you curate. Doing so means your audience is more inclined to read that article and experience its greatness."

19. Use aggregation and social media tools to organise your information. See our list of useful curation tools later in this article, and find the one (or ones) that suit you best.

20. Share appropriately. One platform's treasure is another platform's trash. Some resources are best kept far away from your Facebook feed, where they may not be appreciated, and shared on Twitter, where you have a more specialised audience.

21. Know your audience. One important trait that separates amateur curators from professionals is the ability to gauge one's audience and understand what they want to see and how they want to see it.

22. Update your curations. Don't be afraid to edit and adjust your curated product as you discover more information about your subject. The beauty of digital curation is that tweaking your work has never been so easy.

Content Curation Resources for Teachers and Students

And finally, a list of just a few resources currently available to help your students (and yourself) become more organised and focused in the age of info, with brief descriptions from their respective websites:

1. LessonPaths: "LessonPaths' online learning platform allows anyone with a passion for what they do to curate websites, videos, blogs, and more into Learning Playlists."

2. Diigo: "Read more effectively with annotation tools as you browse around the web; build your personal library in the cloud, with links, pages, notes, pictures etc, never to be lost and ready to be accessed anywhere; provide feedback and catch attention with annotation or screenshots; organise your information as little or as much as you want; and enable better collaboration on information for any group, large or small."

3. Scoop.it: "Use smart searches, 'scoop' what matters to you and add your own perspective, and publish to all your social media platforms with one click."

4. Pinterest: "Use Pinterest's handsome little bookmarks to curate content on anything you can think of. Teachers are already familiar with this tool, but what can students do with it?"

5. Livebinders: "Livebinders opens up a whole new world of opportunity for teachers and students. Create e-portfolios, substitute teacher packets, parent packets, syllabi, teaching tools, lesson plan ideas, and more."

6. Pearltrees: "If you don't already know about Pearltrees, look it up right now. Pearltrees is a free, visual and collaborative library that lets you organise web pages, files, photos and notes to retrieve and share them anywhere. Leverage Pearltrees' community to discover amazing stuff related to your interests and enrich your account. Retrieve anything you keep in Pearltrees from your computer, mobile and tablet."

7. Storify: "Make the Web tell a story. Collect media from across the Web, publish on Storify and embed anywhere, share and notify sources, and go viral."

8. Feedly: "Let the web work for you by arranging the content you rely on into easy-to-read collections. Delve into the specific stories that interest you within your feedly or within a specific publication. Save stories and easily get back to them. Tag with feedly or use favorite web services like Evernote, Pocket, and Instapaper."

9. NetVibes.com: "Netvibes is the all-in-one dashboard intelligence platform for real-time social media monitoring, social analytics, and much more. You may not have heard of this one, but it's got a huge following."

10. ProtoPage.com:"Protopage is your own personal page, which you can access from any computer or mobile phone. Use it to read your own selection of news and blogs, keep bookmarks, to-do lists, sticky notes, and much more."

11. ContentGems.com: "ContentGems keeps you at the forefront on the latest trends, advice, and news in your areas of interest. You can view content on-demand at ContentGems.com or receive a convenient email digest. ContentGems monitors the best online sources, including 200,000+ news sources, blogs, and social media accounts, and filters the results based on your keywords, social signals, and more."

12. Pocket: "Put articles, videos or pretty much anything into Pocket. Save directly from your browser or from apps like Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse and Zite. If it's in Pocket, it's on your phone, tablet or computer. You don't even need an Internet connection."

13. Trap.it: "Draw from Trapit's ever-growing library of more than 100,000 expert-vetted sources, or add your own content sources to the mix. From blog posts and newspaper articles to infographics or videos, Trapit discovers not only the most popular content, but those hidden gems that were lost in the clutter. Define the content most relevant to your audience-and TRAP it-in real time. Distribute this content, automatically, to social media, email newsletters, mobile applications, web sites-wherever your audience chooses to consume content."

14. eLearning Tags: "eLearning Tags is a social bookmarking site where eLearning professionals discover, share, vote and discuss interesting and remarkable content related to the e-learning field."

15. Dipity: "Dipity is a free digital timeline website. Our mission is to organise the web's content by date and time. Users can create, share, embed and collaborate on interactive, visually engaging timelines that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location and time stamps."

16. Symbaloo:"Choose your favourite websites and within a few clicks you can create your very own homepage. Never type in an address manually, go anywhere on the Web with one click, add a new website with one click to your Symbaloo , and more."

17. CurationSoft: "Use CurationSoft to search blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Google News and Flickr for fantastic content your readers will love. CurationSoft covers all the buzz in your market. More sources like Wikipedia, Facebook and more are in development."

18. Paper.li: "Easily publish relevant, curated content daily to engage your community, build relationships and attract the right visitors to your blog or other online resource. Automatically listen to signals from millions of sources to help identify influencers, competitors, experts and conversations around your topic."

19. LibGuides Community:"The LibGuides Community Site aggregates all public content from institutions using LibGuides. It is a useful resource for anybody interested in learning new things or doing library research. The system harvests the knowledge from librarians at thousands of institutions worldwide."

20. Slack: "Slack brings all your communication together in one place. It's real-time messaging, archiving, and searching for modern teams. A great (new) resource for educators or students looking to collaborate and share information."

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Teaching Content Curation and 20 Resources to Help You Do It - InformED

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At St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, Dr. Corinne Weisgerber is teaching a class on social and interactive media. In addition to building a Personal Learning Network of online mentors and experts they can use to supplement their Google searches, her students are required to "curate" the information they gather for projects the same way a museum curator would curate an art exhibit.

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Devil's advocate time - what are the problems with curating?

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Devil's advocate time - what are the problems with curating?

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This blog post makes a great point - curating can just be like that lovely information poster we made at school that looked great and which we spend ages poring over but, actually, was a bit rubbish in terms of content. So, if we're going to do curating with students, do we need to be monitoring and educating about what and how they're curating? Could educator and peer feedback play a role here?

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There was some kerfuffle this year over the issue of students designing posters. Students in a short case study I wrote on blended learning participated at a stage of the case study with multimodal poster design (Glogster.com), incorporating research data, classroom annotated notes, videos, images and frameworks of syllabus knowledge.

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Here are some interesting things we can do with Padlet in the learning environment...

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Here are some interesting things we can do with Padlet in the learning environment...

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I like the idea of
Thinking maps > good for group projects? Could link to assessment!
Curation of (good!) > journal, book, blog and video sources for group projects. Again, good for assessment.
(I'm thinking this is good for class level, and group level learning...would students use this individually?)

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Everything needs to link together constructively...

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Everything needs to link together constructively...

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Just because we can, doesn't mean we should - we should online be using devices and apps if they're part of constructively aligned learning design. Join all the dots and make all bits of learning design relevant and useful!

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Question! Do you have to be an 'expert' to curate?

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Question! Do you have to be an 'expert' to curate?

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Some of the definitions of 'curation' that I have found say that it has to be an expert that curates everything. Students might not feel like experts - either in the materials that they *should* pick, and, perhaps, in the device/app that we've picked for curation. All I can say is I'm neither an expert in curation nor an expert in Padlet, and I've been able to do this and learn loads in just over an hour...How can we scaffold use of devices and make students feel confident? How can we show them that curation is also a journey of exploration, and there's no right way?

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Discover & Share this Music Video GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

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Curating is about...
seeing new connections
contextualising (making sense of big picture)
filtering through the onslaught of info online
providing what your audience needs/wants
transfer only the best ideas - let them rise to the top
The best quote:
Curiosity is an intellectual hunger...

Would curiosity (having a question) drive us to populate a Padlet wall to find answers? Isn't that what I'm doing now? Maybe our lecturer needs to link her solution to specific tasks...maybe she needs to go back to thinking about contructive alignment:

Align the add-ons directly with what the students need to do to be able to succeed on the assessment...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_alignment

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This is the first in a series of videos explaining the shifts we're seeing in the world of content creation. Curation has exploded with the growth of Twitter, Tumblr and now Pinterest. In this video, we wanted to try to get into the heads of some of our favorite curators to understand what makes them tick.

Featured curators include:
Maria Popova (http://twitter.com/brainpicker)
Joanne McNeil (http://twitter.com/rhizomedotorg)
Peter Hopkins (http://twitter.com/bigthink)
Edith Zimmerman (http://thehairpin.com/)
Anthony De Rosa (http://soupsoup.tumblr.com)
Rex Sorgatz (http://twitter.com/fimoculous)
Piers Fawkes (http://psfk.com)
Tina Roth Eisenberg (http://swiss-miss.com)

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In the act of curating, we generate new knowledge - I ask who for...for us? For the audience/participants? I'm definitely learning by exploring what and how to curate!

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Curating is about adding value...

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Here are some associations - some perhaps stereotypical and old-fashioned:
Select/choose/pick
Display/arrange
Endorse/promote
Not interactive
Perception is passive
Gallery, library, museum, archive, record, repository
Boring media
Time consuming

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The Higher Education Academy explains about digital curating...

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The Higher Education Academy explains about digital curating...

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Digital curation is the act of finding and selecting, grouping and contextualising, preserving, maintaining, archiving and sharing digital content...read on!

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What is digital curation?
Digital curation is the act of finding and selecting, grouping and contextualising, preserving, maintaining, archiving and sharing digital content.

Where did digital curation come from?
In the 21st century the term 'curation' has developed from a description of the activity of a museum, gallery or library, to one that includes a wide range of online or digital activities. The term is sometimes used to refer to the preservation and archiving of digital materials. For the purposes of this piece, the focus is on curation as a creative process; the bringing together of a tapestry of digital artefacts to construct new meaning or provide alternative perspectives.

The practice of digital curation emerged as a response to the dramatic growth of digital content published on the Internet. This digital overload - a result of participatory web 2.0 culture in which the tools to create and publish information are readily available to all - has generated a tidal wave of content (Rosenbaum 2011). This infographic produced by Intel estimates that a staggering 1.57GB of global IP data is transferred on the Internet every minute.

The value of the digital curator is his/her ability to scour this content and transform aggregated information into something new - constructing and reconstructing information to create new knowledge and promote/support learning. This emerging role is one of increasing value within news media, where sifting through social media and validating the reliability of sources is paramount, and in other industries - such as public relations and marketing - where this role is used as a tool to manage content.

In higher education, the movement towards personalised learning; the increasing popularity of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach; the increasing numbers of students and faculty who are digitally fluent and have their own personal learning networks (PLN); and a drive towards self-directed learning create an environment in which the skills of personal knowledge management and digital curation become increasingly essential 21st-century competencies.

How does digital curation work?
We are all familiar with the amount of uncontextualised data we receive from a straightforward Google search; a multiplicity of videos, websites, blogs, research papers, news media, tweets, etc. with varying degrees of relevancy for our purposes. Within this context, the digital curator is someone who can navigate the complexity of this information and find the relevant material for their purposes; who identifies patterns; groups and contextualises information to create new meaning; and who shares this with a wider audience.

The Digital Curation Centre provide a data curation model.

Watch this video which asks 'what is curation?' And discusses the subject as a creative practice within a digital context:

See: https://vimeo.com/38524181

Digital curation is a digital literacy and requires a subset of key skills. Among these is social listening; the process of listening to what is being said across multiple channels and who is saying it. In addition, the ability to select the most effective digital tools and to use them fluently enables both the listening process and the sharing of information.

Popular tools include Scoop.it, Pearltrees and Pintrest. Users collect resources they would recommend to others. A typical comparison of features is available here.
http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/curation-platforms-amplify-knowledge-plaza-storify
Curation tools often provide features to search on the users behalf in addition to individual recommendations made directly by the curator. A curator would identify key words or phrases and the curation service may make recommendations for approval by filtering RSS feeds of other providers; this speeds up the process of discovery. Curators then add commentary on the curated item to contextualise it in their collection. Curated collections are often followed by other curators or general users who can take advantage of the filtering that has been done on their behalf.

Examples: Scoop.it curations for web articles

Image curations representing various media types

Mixed media type examples based on a topic

Sector Snapshot

Where is digital curation currently being used and how?
Digital curation is an emergent pedagogy and there are pockets of innovative practice within higher education (HE).

A team from Curtin University's School of Economics and Finance, in Australia, have used digital curation as pedagogical tool within their blended learning strategy. Formally assessed digital curation activities were integrated into a 'flipped' 13-week course where there were working as course facilitators. Digital curation activities enhanced engagement and improved preparation ahead of guest lectures, as evidenced by the quality of questions posed to speakers. Information-sharing and social learning were driven by the curation activities and improvements in critical thinking, analytical and research skills were noted. The Curtin team is using the data collected from this initial project to expand the reach of digital curation across the University (Ostashewski et al. 2014).

At Emerson College in Boston, a team of researchers is exploring digital curation as a core digital literacy. A sample group of 47 students was asked to curate digital essays using the social platform Storify (Storify is a social network for creating stories and timelines from sites such as twitter and Facebook). These were then analysed with initial results indicating an improvement in reflective learning outcomes (Mihailidis and Cohen 2013).

Are you using digital curation in your practice? We would like to hear how you are using it. Share your practice with us at @HEAtoZ #HEAtoZ.

What are the potential benefits of digital curation?
Curation is not a new academic method - the selection and framing of information has always been a core component of academic practice and student learning (Mihailidas and Cohen 2013). Digital curation, the alignment of curation with digital technology and participatory culture, is new and innovative, and provides opportunity for critical inquiry, a platform to demonstrate interpretative and creative abilities, and the potential for both faculty and students to develop digital literacies.

Digital curation can be used to teach about information creation; bias and the framing of sources; analysing and evaluating the credibility of sources; social listening; storytelling; appreciating the diversity of online voices and creative expression online.

There is also great benefit in using the curatorial process as a form of personal knowledge management (PKM). Faculty and students might use PKM methodology to make sense of online material and to guide their choice of tools in capturing and sharing it.

Getting Started

How do I get started with digital curation?
The Seek, Sense, Share Framework is an accessible way to start thinking about digital curation from the perspective of personal knowledge mastery and for integrating some of the digital tools available.

Seek - How do I find information? How can I be a social listener?
Finding resources is dominated by the major search engines but many users do not know how to get the best from them. Familiarise yourself with the advanced search options or search expressions to isolate your potential curations.
Utilise 'feeds' of information from sites/communities of interest. Google can be used to create 'alerts' of specific queries which are then fed into your email or preferred news reader.

If you want to try some social listening why not use Twitter to follow some interesting conversations. Identify where the conversations are happening and who the key players are. If you find it a challenge to follow multiple people and topic conversations at once, use a tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to organise the conversations for you.

Sense - How do I make sense of information? How might I contextualise it?

Make sense of the information you have pulled together by reflecting on it. This might be a short comment in the curation tool you have selected, or perhaps write a blog as part of this reflective or sense-making process. Use your blog to make new connections between pieces of information and to contextualise your thoughts. Provide links and attribute your sources. Use a tool like Flipboard to aggregate your information, annotate and contextualise it. Ensure your curation has a unique viewpoint to attract followers who seek an evaluated and qualified source.

Share - How do I share my knowledge, ideas and experiences? How might I foster and use personal learning networks for this purpose?

Share your ideas and resources with your personal learning networks and encourage conversation and debate. Publish your curated collection using an appropriate service. Recommend the RSS feed of these articles so others can consume it in the tool of their choice. (See https://www.commoncraft.com/video/rss)

(Based on the Seek-Sense-Share model by Harold Jarche.

Have a go, use some of the tools, and then start to think about how you might use digital pedagogies to inform your learning design.

What should I expect if I try this approach?
The activity of digital curation complements blended-learning and flipped-learning approaches and works most seamlessly where there is a Bring your own device (BYOD) strategy in place. There will be a range of digital competencies within any classroom and closing this gap, that is, teaching digital literacies and meeting topic-specific objectives can be a challenge. The benefits of digital curation activities are realised when they are led and structured by faculty who are digitally fluent and confident that they can integrate digital pedagogies (including digital curation) into course design.

Next Steps

Where can I learn more about digital curation?
Browse curated collections from the example providers given earlier.

Sign up with a leading provider and explore the tools for gathering content and allowing you to filter, enhance or qualify it.

Listen to, and join the conversation by following this hashtag on Twitter:

#digitalcuration @brainpickings @Swissmiss

You can also find out more about Digital Curation through the Digital Curation centre
What other topics might I find interesting?
Talk and Share

#digitalcuration @brainpickings @Swissmiss

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What is digital curation? Digital curation is the act of finding and selecting, grouping and contextualising, preserving, maintaining, archiving and sharing digital content. Where did digital curation come from? In the 21st century the term 'curation' has developed from a description of the activity of a museum, gallery or library, to one that includes a wide range of online or digital activities.

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Want to contribute and explore with me? Find out how here...

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Want to contribute and explore with me? Find out how here...

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Watch this video to find what I'm doing, and to see how easy it is to learn by curating with Padlet...Just click the plus!

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BYOD4L GR8CUR8 collaborative padlet for curating

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What is curating? When and how do we curate? Join in with me to learn more! Can we curate together with students - and how? View and add to my Padlet wall via https://rebeccajling.padlet.org/rebeccajacksonlinguist1/n69me9jzi9i2

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This lecturer has the following problem: she shares online resources for students (via a Virtual Learning Environment?) but she finds they see these as un-useful additional tasks, and only seem focused on things linked to assessment. Let's unpack this:
(1) Maybe the VLE is the issue - use something different, or embed something exciting?
(2) Make 'add on' activities easy and quick.
(3) Make it so that formative and/or summative tasks have to be carried out with your solution.
(4) 'Sell' and be motivated about your solution - this might be an issue with engagement and seeing value, as much as anything else... Show the students how to use the tech/apps!
Can Padlet help? We need to explore curating and play with Padlet to find out!

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BYOD4L is a free, online, open course that explores the use of smart devices in learning. It's for students and for educators alike. Every day, we have a new theme to explore. Today's them is curating...will you explore with me?

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Learning about #curating together for #BYOD4L

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Learning about #curating together for #BYOD4L

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What is curating? Isn't it just something that goes on in dusty museums and galleries? Or is a kind of modern, online, interactive scrapbooking? When, where and with whom do we curate, and can we bring it into the learning environment? Add your thoughts and comments and join in my learning journey...