Tech Task 2 - Curation

What is Curation?

When I was investigating the term curation, I came across many long winded, tech type definitions. However it was one of the non-tech definitions that really helped me understand the concept. Like many of the words we use in the IT world; curation had meanings long before the internet. There is actually an occupation where curation is a persons job. They are known as curators, and are often hired by museums and art galleries. Their job is to collect, organize and display these artifacts or pieces of art. Essentially this is exactly what we are doing when we talk about curation from information technology stand point as well. Digital curation are ways in which we can collect, organize and display the data and information we access online.   

How Do I Curate? 

I think my most powerful curation tool is right in my pocket at all times, my apple iphone. The smart phone puts everything in one place and makes it so easy to organize and prioritize. Every social media platform that I use has an application for the iphone. All my different emails are on my phone. I can subscribe to podcasts and be notified anytime a new one is released. Sports are an interest of mine, I prefer the score app because I can really customize it to my favorite teams and leagues. There are so many other apps that I have too, but I do not use them as often. I really have my phone curated to the apps that I find the most important and entertaining.  The notifications setting are what really allow me to control what I am kept updated and informed about. I simply need to download different apps and then I am able to control the notification settings for each individual app. 

How will I use curation as a teacher?

Feedly

I am just starting to use the RSS feed "feedly" and am finding it very useful. I really like how it can put all of my classmates blogs in one place. I could see myself using this to keep things organized when I am teaching. Simply create feeds for each class that I teach, then I would have any work that is done by my students online organized and in one place. 

Pinterest

I am also interested in using pinterest more as a teacher. I currently do not have my own account but I have used it to look for different games in gym and other lesson ideas. I would continue to use it in this way but more so I am interested in using it as a curation tool for my students. I spoke in a previous blog about my interest to try "inquiry based learning" or "open learning". For this process to reach its full potential students will need to be organized online. Students could use pinterest to do this. They could create a board for their project and then pin all of the information and data they gather to that board. I would use their pinterest board as part of my evaluation for the project.