Curator

Curator

Curation for Learning

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 blog 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, review the following references to learn more:

A blog about Teacher As Curator  by Ted Curran.

A video that answers the question  What is Content Curation? (Centerline Digital, 2015):

A graphic view of content curation:

Examples of content curation tools include  Pocket, Scoop.it and diigo  and see more Curation tools in the Extend Toolkit to learn more about these tools and others.

Each of these resources reveals 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 along the way.

Extend Community 

Visit the Extend Community Space Your Definition is This discussion area (in the #curator channel) to identify your definition of content curation and why you think it might be important/useful.