Thing 08: Digital Curation Tools

Thing 08: Digital Curation Tools

As a school librarian, this topic is very near and dear to my heart. As a matter of fact, curation was featured heavily in the latest iteration of the AASL Standards. I had to chuckle a bit in the reading and reminisce about the days of the early web with Yahoo’s Subject directories and InfoSlug - the world pre-Google. I think an important idea that was mentioned in the reading that stuck with me is that anybody can make lists & curate but there is a difference between quality and just dumping a bunch of links onto a website. Unfortunately, it’s easier to run into crap on the Internet than it is to find quality. To curate resources, and do it well, takes skill. A good Librarian can help with this process ;)

In looking at the resources for this module, I’d say that I have familiarity with using about half of the tools that I looked at - mostly Pinterest, Diigo, and Symbaloo. I know that some of my fellow librarians love curating using Symballo but I’ve never warmed up to it….I’ve never found it visually appealing. ScoopIt looked cool but I was really disappointed to learn that the service was discontinued.

Flipboard is a personal favorite that I have installed on my iPhone.I love that I can aggregate content that interests me and I frequently get new articles delivered in a magazine style feed.

I’ve learned so much and have come across loads of interesting new content just by having this app installed on my phone. I was so satisfied to learn that they enhanced their website

I played with Diigo for a bit and was intrigued by the possibilities of using it with students. I like that there is a Chrome extension and it plays nice with Google accounts. The annotator tool attached to my mouse really started to get on my nerves when it was turned on all of the time. I could see using it once and a while but having it pop up and be attached to my movements really bothered me. The bookmarks on steroids thought really was stuck in my head throughout using the tool. In terms of using it instructionally, there definitely is some instructional value.

For the assignment to this module I felt a little sleazy, as if I was cheating, because I chose to spend time with Pinterest. I really do enjoy Pinterest in my personal life and have many boards to keep track of my recipes and ideas for remodeling my house. I never thought of using Pinterest to the extent that Weston High School did in Joyce Valenza’s SLJ article. I like the idea of creating a public board for anyone to add titles to as book suggestions. It was extremely easy to set up a board and label it with a genre and begin adding titles. Pinterest makes it easy to share boards as well, so I can see passing along the link to teachers & students to have them populate it with books. Since I am doing a complete overhaul of my collection, this is a great way to get a birds eye view of everything to purchase. It would also let me see if my orders were balanced with fiction vs nonfiction and among genres. Additionally, Pinterest is the most visually appealing of all the curation tools….hence its popularity!

https://pin.it/l5ljj2vnfwy7jk