Curator: Curation for Learning

Curator

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Curation for Learning

Content curation is not about collecting links or being an information pack rat. It is more about putting resources into a context with organization, annotation, and presentation. Content curators provide a customized, vetted selection of the best and most relevant resources on a very specific topic.

Beth Kanter, a social media author and blogger, provides this definition of curation in her Content Curation Primer

Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific theme. The work involves sifting, sorting, arranging, and publishing information. A content curator cherry picks the best content that is important and relevant to share with their community. It isn’t unlike what a museum curator does to produce an exhibition: They identify the theme, they provide the context, they decide which paintings to hang on the wall, how they should be annotated, and how they should be displayed for the public.

If the notion of content curation is new to you, or if you want to brush up on your understanding of the concept, choose from one of the following references to learn more.

A Blog post about Teacher As Curator by Ted Curran.
A video explanation – What is Content Curation? (Centerline Digital, 2015) :
A graphic view:

Image of content curation focusing on Aggregation, Distillation, Chronology, Mash-ups and then Elevation to a newly created curation.

Each of these resources reveal that content curation likely aligns well to what you already do when you design and develop your courses to facilitate learning. Here, we simply reframe the process and identify tools and strategies to assist you.

Extend Activity

What’s your definition of content curation?

Send a tweet with a link to the definition of content curation that resonates with you to @ontarioextend and include the hashtag #oextend

Or blog about curation and Tweet the link to the blog to @ontarioextend with #oextend.