Curation Tools

What is a curation tool? In "Plain English", it is social bookmarking! "Digital curation is the selection, preservation, maintenance, collection, and archiving of digital assets. Digital curation establishes, maintains and adds value to repositories of digital data for present and future use." 

What are some uses for curation tools?

• Organize and disseminate new content
• Collect and share professional materials
• Foster discussion and current events
• Connect with others
• Critique information found on the web
• Create reading lists

• "collective intelligence"

Some examples of curation tools used in education are: Live Binders, Pinterest, Pearltrees, Symbaloo, Twitter, Diingo, and Scoop.it! My favorite curation tool is Pinterest.  I started using it for personal use, but thought it would be a great idea to create a professional Pinterest page. This past January, I had the opportunity to go to ATiA in Orlando Florida.  One of the sessions I went to was called "Leveraging Social Media for Career Development, Networking, and Lifelong Learning" by Lauren Enders.  Lauren is an SLP that specializes in assistive technology and is well known for her amazing Pinterest page. After attending her session, I was inspired to create my own.  I wasn't able to see the true benefit of using Pinterest as a curation tool (besides a way for me to organize some of my resources for myself) until last week.  I met with our OTs because we are doing a presentation on using the iPad to support writing.  The OTs claimed that they hardly used their iPads, and the only "good apps" cost money.  I made it my mission that day to find apps that were free AND beneficial.  I created a folder on my Pinterest board entitled "OT apps" and sent the link to the therapists.  After I did this, their entire attitude changed! I was completely amazed and grateful that they changed their minds.  It was almost as though I needed to start their research of apps, and why not do that through Pinterest?!! I'm thrilled that they looked at my board, and they are excited and researching their own apps.

Take a look at the upper right hand side of my blog to get a link to my Pinterest page!


Resources: 
Google slides, presentations, and assignments by Brenda Doucette