Digital Curation for Educators and Students

Netflix. Pandora Channels. YouTube Playlists. Facebook Groups. Twitter Collections. What do these collections have in common?

Each is an example of digital curation. As a museum curator gathers artifacts for an exhibit, organizes the information to share, and creates an aesthetically appealing display, the success criteria for curation resides in the quality of the display based on his/her understanding, analysis, and synthesis of the content to be shared.

As an academic task, curation naturally evolves as part of daily learning in classrooms of all ages. For students, it may take the form of a website, an anthology, a history report, a literary review, an author study, an interactive notebook, etc. Curation tasks involve students (1) completing research, (2) gathering and analyzing the information, (3) organizing and developing big ideas and themes, and (4) creating a product or design to share their learning.

Likewise, in educational settings such as the classroom, faculty meeting, workshop, or conference, educators curate resources to share with others and to grow professionally. At VASCD 2018 Beyond Measure Annual Conference attendees exemplified the benefits of digital curation. Presenters front loaded sessions with an abundance of resources host on a website, in a PowerPoint, and on social media. They gathered key reference materials, organized them by topic, and shared them through an app. Attendees, in turn, snapped photos, accessed website links, saved Google documents and saved these digital resources to be used when they returned to their schools.

What digital curation tools assisted #VASCD18 professionals to efficiently gather and organize quality resources? How are these resources shared? Check out two examples:

Padlet is a digital word wall in which various forms of content can be added. Users can add documents, PDFs, video, audio, websites, and more! Check out an example of a #VASCD18 padlet used during a blended learning session. Digital Tools for the Classroom curated by Brittany Miller. Another example of using a padlet for digital curation includes Podcasts for Professional Learning . Learn more about Padlet at https://goo.gl/UGUgPk

Wakelet is a free, digital curation platform that helps users curate online content by adding a link, uploading a document, following a hashtag, and more. This curation engine updates in real-time. With the click of a button, you can easily post resources to share with your colleagues. Check out this #VASCD18 Wakelet example highlighting the relationships and connections made at the annual conference last month. Learn more at https://goo.gl/HN9kFt