Welcome to the sixth and penultimate step in our free professional learning series on building your PLN.

In this activity you will explore:

  1. What content curation is and the benefits of content curation.
  2. A simple framework for getting started with content curation.
  3. A range of different tools that you can choose from to make content curation easier.

What Is Content Curation?

We are living in an era of information overload. There is so much content shared online that we actively seek out people who have good content curation skills to help us “sort the wheat from the chaff”.

A person with good curation skills saves us time by sifting through the vast abundance of content on the internet to select the best, most relevant resources on a specific topic or theme. The curator organizes, manages, and collates for their own use and shares with us.

If you look closely at most educators with a high following on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram you’ll notice that most are great content curators and share excellent resources.

Their sharing and content curation skills helped them build their PLN.

information hydrant
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Will Lion via Compfight

Video: What Is Content Creation?

This 90 second video provides a useful overview of content creation.

21st Century Content Curation

Of course, content curation is nothing new. It has been an important skill for hundreds of years — think of newspapers, art galleries, museums, or simple storytelling.

Teachers have always been curators too — bringing together the most worthwhile materials to help their students learn. In the past, this might have been limited to books, posters, concrete materials, guest speakers, etc. But of course, there are so many wonderful digital resources available now too.

Content curation has been happening since the beginning of time in some form or another; however, it’s becoming increasingly worthwhile and complex as the volume of information online continues to increase.

21st century content curation can involve finding, verifying, organizing, annotating, remixing, creating, collating, and sharing.

This might sound overwhelming but it doesn’t have to be. Luckily, there are some excellent free digital tools for content curation which we’ll explore in this post.

The Benefits Of Content Curation

The main reasons why educators curate content include:

  1. To find, organize, and manage information and resources on specific topics.
  2. To stay informed about the latest information on specific topics which leads to professional growth.
  3. To learn through the process. As you search for and curate the best resources, you reflect on their value and you may develop new ways of thinking.
  4. To help build their PLN. Networks actively seek and follow good content curators because they save us time.
  5. To learn how to curate themselves so they can teach students how to curate content for research, their interests, and passions. Curation is an important part of being digitally literate.

Learn more about students as content curators in this excellent short video by John Spencer.

The Curation Process

We made this diagram to simplify the process of content curation. Feel free to use it on your blog or share with others.

Read, Editorialize, Share -- The Basics Of Content Curation Edublogs PLN Teacher Challenge

1) Read — Visit your favorite blogs or social media accounts, use curation tools like Flipboard or Feedly, or perhaps subscribe to newsletters. This consumption might mostly include text-based materials but don’t forget podcasts and videos too.

FILTER — Before moving on to the next step, you need to filter. You do not just want to share anything and everything. Check out Are You a Curator or a Dumper? by Jennifer Gonzalez. You also need to verify and make sure you don’t share anything that might not be true.

2) Editorialize — Here is where you need to add your own touches to your findings to help others. This involves considering your audience and what they might be interested in. You might even put together a few similar resources that complement or contrast each other.

CREATE — Before sharing, you might consider if you could create something with the content. This could be putting your favorite quote on a graphic to make your findings more shareable. Or maybe you could make your own infographic to share based on your findings.

3) Share — As we’re discovering throughout this PLN series, you can share with your PLN in a wide range of ways. Commonly, teachers will share with their network via their blog or social media. Sometimes you might want to compile resources together into one location using a tool like Wakelet, Google Docs, or Padlet. Once you share, be willing to interact with your PLN. Invite them to comment by asking questions and don’t forget to reply to any comments. Needless to say, when you’re sharing other people’s work, you should make it clear where it’s from.

Note: we’ll be explaining the tools mentioned above further on in this post. 

Examples Of Shared Content On Twitter

Content curation is not just finding a link and putting it in a tweet. Your PLN is not going to get much value out of that.

As the curator, you can challenge yourself to do a little more from time to time.

Here are some examples of curated work from educators.

Tony Vincent is well known for his graphics he creates for social media. These are always shared extensively.

Shannon McClintock Miller put together this Padlet with ideas of books to celebrate International Dot Day.

Jake Miller regularly makes GIFs to enhance his tweets which are well received by his followers.

Quotes are always popular additions to tweets. Check out our post on quotes if you want to learn how to make your own.

Sketchnoting has taken the edtech world by storm over the last few years. Julie Woodard is well known for her excellent sketchnotes which are a great way to visualize and summarize content. Here’s an example:

BookSnaps are a popular choice for sharing snippets of professional reading. Tara Martin coined the term BookSnaps and you can read more about them on her website.

Here is an example of a simple BookSnap from Jennifer Tod.

Emojis can catch a reader’s eye and make a nice addition to a summary for the time poor.

Digital Curation Tools

There are a plethora of free digital tools you can use to help with content curation.

Tools generally fall into one of these three categories.

  • News discovery tools — Use your preferred news discovery tool to select and aggregate the content. News discovery tools save time by feeding you the most relevant content. Examples of news discovery tools include Feedly, Flipboard, Nuzzle, and following a hashtag on Twitter.
  • Curation tools — Use your preferred curation tools to display your content with context, organization, annotation, and presentation. Examples of curation tools include Scoop.IT, Flipboard, Diigo, Wakelet, LiveBinder, or a blog.
  • Sharing tools — Select which networks you share your curated content on. For example, you might share the content on Twitter and Facebook. Some people will choose to follow your curated content via your curation tools (such as follow you on Scoop.IT, Pinterest, Flipboard Magazine, or Diigo).

Overview Of Popular Curation Tools

Which tools you use, and how you curate, is very personal.

You might have a set workflow that you follow regularly, or you might dip in and out of using different tools depending on your mood and needs.

We’ll now provide a snapshot of how some of the more popular curation tools work. These include:

  • Blogs
  • Wakelet
  • Nuzzel
  • Pocket
  • Diigo
  • Evernote
  • Flipboard
  • LiveBinders
  • Pinterest
  • Scoop.it

Blogs

Blogs posts are a popular way of curating content because:

  • You can dive deeper and write a detailed elaboration. You may find that the act of writing helps to transform your vague ideas into well structured thoughts.
  • You can customize and organize vast amounts of information in meaningful ways.
  • You might write a post about a single article you’ve read, or create a round-up post. This is where you share links to great content from multiple sources about a specific topic. Ideally, you’d add your own short annotations too.

Refer to Silvia Tolisano’s post on blogging as a curation platform for more information.

Check out these examples of educators who curate content using blogs:

For those who are new to blogging, we recommend you work through our personal blogging series. This series takes you step-by-step through the process of setting up your own personal educator blog.

Wakelet

Wakelet allows you to save, organize and tell stories with content from around the web.

This is a relatively new tool that is becoming very popular with teachers.

You can sign up for free or create a quick collection without signing up. There’s also a browser extension to save links from the web.

Your collections can be public or private. You can also embed collections on any blog or website.

Here’s a simple example:

Find out more about Wakelet including how to get set up and how to use it in the classroom in this post. 

4 steps to getting started with Wakelet by Kathleen Morris

Nuzzel

Nuzzel logoNuzzel is a ‘news monitoring and research tool’.

If you’re on Twitter or Facebook you might have found that it can be serendipitous in nature. You sometimes just ‘see what you see’ and there are no guarantees that you won’t miss the most interesting or important stories.

When you sign up for a free Nuzzel account you can get a curated email sent to you daily with the top stories from the people you follow.

This is really handy to stay abreast of important stories. You can then explore those links and decide whether they’re worth sharing with your PLN.

With Nuzzel, you can curate your own newsletter for your followers too. You can include stories you find interesting and add a personal touch with a headline and comments.

Your PLN can subscribe to your newsletter and you can share it on social media like Troy Hicks has done here.

Pocket

Sometimes you’re browsing the web or social media and you come across an interesting article, video, or link. You’d like to read it but you might be short on time.

This is where Pocket comes in. You put that item ‘in your Pocket’ for later.

You can save directly from your browser or from apps like Twitter, Feedly, or Flipboard. You can view it again when you’re ready — from your computer, phone, or tablet. You can even view the item when you’re offline.

When you’ve reviewed the items you’ve saved, you can then decided if there are any you’d like to share with your PLN.

The ad-supported version of Pocket is totally free.

Watch how this user reads his saved articles on the Pocket app.

Diigo

Diigo is a free social bookmarking tool that allows users to share online resources like websites, articles, and online tools in a private or public group format.

The benefit of using a social bookmarking tool is it allows you to organize and store your bookmarks online rather than in the browser of your computer.

This means you can log into your account, on any device, at any time, and easily find your bookmarks.

Watch the following video by Ms. Lamm to learn more about Diigo.

Check out these examples of how these educators use Diigo:

  1. Vicki Davis
  2. Vicky Sedgwick
  3. Anne Mirtschin

Evernote

Evernote enables you to collect information, curate resources, find your resources, and share with others all from the one workspace.

With Evernote, your notes, web clips, files, images, and voice memos can be sorted into folders, tagged, annotated, edited, given comments, searched, and accessed whenever you need them on any of your devices.

Evernote also enables you to view, input, and edit data even when offline.

Watch this short overview by Lindsey Maczynski about curation using Evernote.

Note: While there are still many teachers who enjoy using Evernote, changes to the free plan in 2016 resulted in some educators switching to other options. 

Flipboard

Flipboard was originally designed as a social network aggregation, magazine-format app for iPad in 2010. It’s now the most popular of the magazine-like content aggregation apps.

Flipboard’s strength is you are able to bring your social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn into one location alongside your favorite news sources and anything else you like to read, or watch (like YouTube). On top of this, it’s easy to share your favorite content with your social networks and easy to curate your favorite content into Flipboard magazine(s).

Watch this video to learn more about Flipboard.

Flipboard is a powerful tool for curating your favorite content into magazine(s).

The benefits of using a Flipboard magazine include:

  1. Quickly curating and sharing articles you like directly to your own magazine from within Flipboard (or using the Flip It bookmarklet in your web browser), while also sharing the articles with your social networks at the same time!
  2. Other Flipboard users can subscribe to your Flipboard magazine(s) allowing them to easily read the articles you like to share.
  3. Anyone who clicks on a link can read your magazine using their web browser regardless of whether or not they have a Flipboard account.

Here are links to some example Flipboard Magazines:

Watch this video to see how Sue Waters uses Flipboard.

You’ll find detailed step-by-step instructions on how to set up and use Flipboard here.

LiveBinders

LiveBinders is your digital binder for all of your online content and learning.

With your LiveBinder, you can create a central hub full of resources on a topic that you choose. Almost everything that you can think of can be added to your LiveBinder – links to websites, YouTube videos, Flickr images, PDF/Microsoft Word documents, and QR codes are just some examples of rich content for your LiveBinder.

Check out Joy Kirr’s Genius Hour LiveBinder to see how Livebinder can be used for curating resources.

Click here to open this binder in a new window.

Refer to the Educator’s Guide to LiveBinders to get started.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board or pinboard that allows you to find and curate images, videos, or websites.

The visual aspect of Pinterest is a key reason why it’s captured the interest of so many.

You add items to your Pinterest accounts using pins. A pin is a visual bookmark which could be an image, video, slideshare, or a web clip of a site.

When you click on a pin it takes you to the site where the pin was sourced from so you can learn more.

Some people think of Pinterest as a social media platform but it’s really more like a search engine. Pinterest calls itself a visual discovery engine.

Watch this video tutorial to learn more about Pinterest.

You can check out how we use Pinterest here.

Examples of educators using Pinterest to curate and share:

  1. Eric Sheninger
  2. Larry Ferlazzo
  3. Vicky Davis
  4. Cult of Pedagogy

Scoop.it

Scoop.it allows you to create a web page to share what you find interesting with the world.

It does this combining clever curation tools that make it easy to gather content in one place with a wide range of sharing functionalities to let people know about your Scoop.it page.

Watch this video to learn more about Scoop.it.

Check out these examples of how Scoop.it can be used:

For more information on Scoop.it refer to how to keep your content fresh with Scoop.it.

Curation Pitfalls

Kay Oddone created this diagram based on a presentation by Joyce Seitzinger.

It summarizes some of the pitfalls you want to avoid as a content curator.

Content Curation Pitfalls
Image by Kay Oddone

The Hoarder: a curator who collects everything indiscriminately, who doesn’t organise their content, and doesn’t share – this is really closer to simple aggregation than curation.

The Scrooge: one who, similarly hoards their information – although they may organise their collection, they don’t share either; one of the key purposes of educational content curation!

The Tabloid (or National Enquirer): a collector who indiscriminately collates everything together, and generously shares this aggregation, whether others want/need it or not!

The Robot: a curator who uses tools to shares automatically, with no context related additions or value adding; in this case, the curation is really no better than providing a list of Google search results.

Avoiding these pitfalls is what differentiates the effective content curator from those simply ‘collecting’ content.

Visit Kay’s post to learn more about content curation.

Create Your Own Workflow

Remember, while there are tools that can help with the aggregation and organization of all the great resources you’re coming across, technology can’t do the curation. This is the job for a human who knows their audience (their PLN).

We encourage you to try out the following process if you’re ready to give content curation a go:

  1. Find the tool(s) that you prefer to use for news discovery, for curation, and for sharing.
  2. Curate the content that helps you, and is helpful for others.
  3. Make it part of your routine to curate and share content.

As you get going and try different tools, your wants and needs might evolve. You’ll figure out the pros and cons of different tools as you use them.

Stick with it and you’ll begin to develop your own workflow that works for you!

Want to see an example of a workflow?

Richard Byrne is a master curator, keeping hundreds of thousands of teachers in the loop on a daily basis. Watch how he uses Feedly and Google Keep together.

Watch David McGavock’s video to see how he use Netvibes, Scoop.IT, and Diigo as his curation and learning tools.

Your Task

It’s now time to take action!

We’d like you to add your voice and ideas to our ongoing conversation about PLNs by undertaking one or more of these challenges:

  1. Review our list of popular curation tools. Leave a comment on this post to share what tools you currently use (and why) for news discovery, curation, and sharing. Tell us which of the curation tools you plan to try and why. Do you have any other tools to add that you’ve tried or heard about?
  2. Set up an account. Choose one of the popular curation tools such as Flipboard, Nuzzel, Scoop.it, or Pinterest. Sign up and leave a link to your account so others can take a look and follow you.
  3. Interesting tweet. Find an example of a tweet where someone has curated and shared some information in an interesting way. Maybe they included a summary, visual, sketchnote, GIF, or quote. Share the link to the tweet so we can take a look!
  4. Write a post on your blog. Share your own thoughts about curation. Please include @edublogs if you tweet your post so we can share your post with our network. Leave a comment with a link to your post so we can read it! In your blog post, you might like to cover topics like:
    • What do you see as the advantages of curating content?
    • What tips do you have for newbies?
    • What did you learn about content curation that you didn’t know?
    • What are your future goals for content curation?
    • How could you teach your students something about content curation?

Also feel free to leave a comment to ask any questions or share your tips.

How to leave a comment: Scroll down to find the comment box. Write your comment, then enter your name and email address (email addresses are not published). Enter the anti-spam word. Press submit and we will moderate your comment ASAP.

629 thoughts on “Step 6: Using Curation Tools As A Connected Educator

  1. I am currently using Pinterest as a curation tool. I have had Pinterest for a very long time and I have used it for many different things. I have used it to create boards with quotes, interior design ideas, and recipes. Most of the time, it is used for my own recreational use. However, I do sometimes use it to collect lessons and ideas for my own future classroom. I have one board that I have filled with ideas on how to organize my classroom and how to decorate it. Though this may not seem important, I have found that how a classroom is layed out and what its colors are can greatly impact the students’ days. For example, I have been collecting ideas on how to decorate my future classroom with a blue base- for calmness. I have also collected ideas for different types of furniture and gadgets for my students to have to help them focus.

    I have another board that I have used to collect possible lesson plans and tips. I know that I will need to adapt many lessons so that they my special education students can best benefit from them. I hope to use these lessons as an educator someday so that when I do have a student who needs some extra help, I can fall back upon my lesson. Whether I use them all or not, they have given me ideas that I know I will be able to take ideas away from some way or another. I think that all teachers should use Pinterest- it is easy to use and very accessible, like other Social Media platforms. Its boards allow me to be well organized and to find information I save almost instantly. It is a popular tool, and one that all teachers could find positives from.

  2. Out of the whole list of popular curation tools the only one I’ve even heard of is Pinterest. I use Pinterest but haven’t used it for education purposes. It was nice to learn about all of the curation tools and I’m looking forward to diving deeper into some of them and eventually using them when I start my career.

  3. Whilst I currently have a pinterest account it is not something I have used as a resource for this work before. That will shortly be changing, and I intend to also look into Nuzzel, since it seems a very good tool, among other from the list above. Having one place for different teaching ideas and a way to keep them all together as opposed to scattered through various computer data files would be invaluable.

  4. Pinterest, Pocket, and LiveBinders are all tools that would help me with my organization so much. I want to improve the organization of my teaching materials and resources. Pinterest seems superior to a site like Scoop It since there are no quantity limitations on the number of boards one can create on Pinterest. My Pinterest username is @lisadelao.

  5. I think Pinterest is a great cite to use. Pinterest is something I am very familiar with, and I think the appearance of the site is interesting and entertaining while also providing a huge variety of activities and ideas. I also think the organization of the site is fun to use because it can be unique to the individual by utilizing the pin and board functions. Out of all the new tools I’ve been introduced to, I think LiveBinders may be something I’d like to try. I really love the tab organization aspect of it, and it seems like it would be easy to navigate. As someone who is a little technologically behind, I think finding a place that is accessible and relatively easy to learn would be best for me.

  6. I currently love using pinterest for inspiration in my classroom. Pinterest can give teachers ideas for lesson plans, classroom design, and it also gives teachers motivation to keep going when teaching gets difficult. I use pinterest to think of creative ways to do seating charts and posters around my classroom, as well as get ideas for different lessons and worksheets. It is also very simple to navigate and organize your own posts, and you can leave comments or chat with other users on the app.

  7. The tool I use most frequently is Pinterest. I think it has so many creative ideas available to me. I also like how I can find blogs and/or websites that I can keep visiting again and again for inspiration, and that it doesn’t just leave me with a picture I have to pin. Pinterest is a really fun app as well, since you get to see so many different bright pictures. I have definitely used Pinterest for help in creating games and in organization.

  8. I currently have not used any curation tools for news discovery or to organize my content. After viewing the suggested curation tools above, I plan to try Evernote and Flipboard. I really like the feature of Evernote that allows its users to view/edit data even when being offline. This would allow me to continue annotating a specific resource at any given time! I also would like to try Flipboard because I can link all of my social media in one place. This would allow me to share resources I found on different platforms in one location!

  9. I enjoy the site and or social media account of Pinterest. I think Pinterest is so successful because it is actual useful information placed on the site for good reasoning. For example Educators place their idea on this account so that one students cannot see pinterest but two other educators can if the need support or ideas. This site is so intriguing that I have created a variety of ideas on the site in general also, and it is great visually as imaging and or seeing an idea helps me better understand the concept. All around great site and will continue to use it.

  10. I think most people know about Pinterest, and it is the only one here that I am familiar with. I love it, it is great for finding content and keep-saking the ones you love most. I’m interested in Flipboard. It is similar to Pinterest, but also has its own style going on. It reminds me of a feature on Snapchat, but with multiple different topics than just one. I’m going to try that one out for my teaching needs.

  11. The only curation tool I am familiar with is Pinterest. I use Pinterest a fair amount to gather resources and put them together on board. Whether I use Pinterest for educational resources or others it is a staple curation tool in my life.

  12. I would like to try out using the curation tool Pocket because I often find things that I want to read, but don’t necessarily have time to at that moment. Pocket allows you to save articles, blogs, etc. “in your pocket” for later, and this sounds like a beneficial curation tool because it saves all of the different things you want to read in one easy place to come back to. You don’t have to worry about bookmarking a bunch of articles and forgetting which ones you really want to read because it will all be saved in Pocket. I also want to try out LiveBinders because it is a good tool to organize your information in an online binder format. I’ve always liked organizing a binder with dividers because it makes it easy to flip through to the information you are looking for. LiveBinders allows you to emulate the use of dividers in a binder by creating different sections that you can click through to easily find information. You can even color code your sections and subdivide the information in each section into smaller sections that are easily digestible and simple to click through. I’ve used Pinterest for many different reasons in the past, whether it be making a “wedding inspo board” or a “nursery ideas board,” but I’ve never used it in a more professional sense. I would like to explore some of the educational aspects, boards, and people on the platform and think it would be a great way to compile and share resources with others.

  13. REVIEW: I currently use Pinterest and follow a wide range of blogs as curation tools. I like Pinterest as it allows me to keep a wide range of resources classified into ss many sections and subsections as I desire, and it constantly refreshes with recommended articles and blogs in the content areas I have specified. It also has an excellent search tool that allows me to find anything I am looking for and related searches. The blogs I tend to follow also use Pinterest, which allows me to stay up to date with some of my favorite publications. I would like to learn more about other curation and content creation tools.

  14. I will be responding to the first prompt.

    Currently, I use Pinterest as my main source of curation. I have been using Pinterest since I was in early high school so I am very familiar with the platform and can easily get lost on the app for hours reading different things and learning about so many different things. In the future, I would really like to start using Pocket because I often save articles and never return to them because I forget that I had saved them. I think having them all in one place would really help me to remember and also help me learn more!

  15. I currently use Pinterest. I love it because I am a very visual person and it helps provide me with hundreds of ideas to use in the classroom. I am able to find many other educators there and look at their ideas and what works best in their classroom along with modifying any of it for my classroom.

  16. I currently use pinterest a LOT for education. I get examples for posters in the classroom and fun activities to do with my students and it’s easy because I can organize it how I like so that I know where to find these ideas. Another great website I use is Canva which is where I can recreate quotes or posters or activities and ideas and then share them with my students in an interesting and engaging way.

  17. One of the curation tools that I use frequently is Pinterest. I love to look for resources on there and find different ways to teach my students. I like finding classroom organization inspiration and ways to incorporate flexible seating in effective ways. I think that Pinterest is great way to connect with other teachers and share your resources as well.

  18. One of the curation tools that I use frequently is Pinterest. I love to look for resources on there and find different ways to teach my students. I like finding classroom organization inspiration and ways to incorporate flexible seating in effective ways.

  19. I have used Pinterest for a long time! I only started looking at different education boards when I first started college. There are so many different classroom ideas, lesson planning tips, how to go over certain topics, and so much more. Most posts on Pinterest are also super detailed with everything you would need which is super helpful. I love using Pinterest!

  20. In forming my lesson plans I am scouring the internet for fun and interactive ways to teach my content. I have used almost the entire google sweet to create content and make it more lively. One site that I frequent a lot because it has great content and is worked on by multiple teachers is, https://mrnussbaum.com/ , It always has fun activities to use with your students and has content on every subject. I am definitely going to use twitter in the future once I have a better understanding of how to use it. Twitter just has an endless stream of content that new and interesting ideas are being shares constantly.

  21. Many of the curation tools are new to me. As a novice Flipboard user, I plan to further develop my skills there and venture into different curation tools like Pinterest and LiveBinders. Pinterest will allow me to readily sift through math educators and gain more specific content and resources curated to my content area. LiveBinders will allow me to further curate content based on student feedback and to readily access it for further refinement and reference.

  22. So far in my collegiate career I have relied on the internet a LOT for outside information. Edutopia has helped me gather a lot of valuable and reliable information. I have been able to find lesson plans and unit plan frameworks which have been extremely helpful. I mentioned in step 6 that I often check out the Cult of Pedagogy which has blog posts, podcasts, and videos about teaching. I have also used Pinterest for information and visuals that would appeal to students. I have not heard of most of the curation tools on this page. Wakelet and Flipboard seem easy to use and easy to find information with. I really like the concept of LiveBinders because you can organize your information into categories. The possibilities are pretty endless for curation, it is exciting to imagine all the things out there we can learn!

  23. Out of the list of popular curation tools, the only one I use currently is Pinterest because I love all the nice pictures it has, the quick and easy DIYs, and the some of the free printable they share. I would like to try using Scoop.it to share things I find interesting that might interests others.

  24. One tool I currently use is Pinterest . I mainly use Pinterest to get ideas for how to decorate my future classroom, different activities for creating a classroom community and just different ideas about what to do in the class. One tool I plan on using in the future is Live Binder. I would use Live Binder so that I can keep on the different things I’ve learned from the internet. It is also a helpful tool to have when I don’t have a lot or time to read the blog or watch a video I can just put it there for me to watch at a later time. It will also be helpful with allowing me to go back and review a tool or technique that I used in a past lesson and may need a refresher on it.

  25. (1) As a pre-service History teacher, I currently only use blogging. After seeing all of the educational applications of the curation tools on this list, I really look forward to trying out Flipboard for both professional and classroom use. Flipboard seems to have limitless applications; for example, I could create monthly and annual “magazines” for my own reference, containing all of the social media content I find to improve my teaching. Flipboard could also work as a classroom resource for creating learning activities—maybe a magazine of primary sources—or portfolio-style assessments where students compile all of their content from a unit of study into one magazine that they curate by reflecting on what they learned from each activity they completed.

    One possible addition to this list is Google Sites, which might be a substitute for LiveBinder in classrooms where teachers and students use Google Classroom as their learning platform.

  26. I currency uses Pinterest. I love how simple and easy it is to use. Suppose you need a quick idea for a classroom wall. All you have to do is search easy classroom organization, and it gives you tons of pictures and websites that help you find your idea. I would love to uses Flipboard because it allows you to connect all your social media on one page.

  27. curate material for my classroom. When I was reading this step, I thought about all of the tools and which ones I thought would work best for me in my future classroom. The tools that stuck out to me were blogs, wakelet, pocket, and pinterest. I saved the blog and the pinterest ideas because these are things that I use in my daily life now and I can see their usefulness and applicability in the educational realm. The other two curation tools that stuck out to me were wakelet and pocket. I chose wakelet because it is a way to connect with other teachers and share ideas in a constructive forum. The pocket really struck a chord with me because I often come across articles and want to come back to them later so I always bookmark or copy and paste the link for them to save it. I think with pocket, I would be able to easily save and come back to articles that I want to read.

  28. The curation tool that I currently use is Pinterest. This personalized too is very user friendly and is set up to make it easy to organize content that you find and want to save for later. I also love how many boards pop up when you search for something. It really is an extensive list of materials. But, at the same time, I can quickly look over the visual images of these pages to see which of them might be what I am looking for. I can also narrow down my search to very specific things such as ‘gas laws – high school chemistry’ and materials will show up that are very helpful. This is a great way for me to brainstorm what manipulatives, organizational charts, and engaging activities I can use in the lessons that I plan. There are also further links to places where I can obtain physical plans and materials that might be useful to me. Another curation tool that I use to help students stay up to date on current events is Newsela which can be filtered by grade level and topic. The next curation tool I would like to explore and potentially use is Wakelet.

  29. I currently use Pinterest and Zotero to curate ideas or resources. Zotero is very helpful for saving references for research projects and sharing links/pdfs of those sources to team members. I like Pinterest to save and organize creative ideas, as it shows the resource as a picture first, and then you may click on to go to the link for more information, without cluttering your feed with long posts.

  30. I’ve used Pintreset and twitter. The reason I use Pinterest is to organize ideas, creations, and boards I want to get inspiration from to create an interactive classroom environment. Also to get ideas of lessons or activities i could teach in my class. This tool allows me to pin things I like, and browse through thousands of people’s Pinterest boards, where you can find more things. I’ve used twitter to stay current with events happening around me and in the world. Twitter offers numerous resources like links to videos, articles, pictures etc. Where you can explore specific topics, issues, and events trending or happening. I plan to try flipboard which is a tool for creating magazines based on creations of your own. I think it will help me organize articles I want to share more creatively and efficiently. It also offers a new way for educators to share their social networks right with articles.

  31. I use Pinterest the most for discovering new things. In my opinion it has the best format and is the easiest to use. I like how you can organize all of the ideas and things you find on the site into boards. This makes it easier to go back and find the information. I also like how Pinterest generates a customized home page for you based on what you have searched and said you like. They do half the work for you and find you new ideas. To me, Pinterest just seems the most modern and accessible. I have never heard of the other sites but I am interested in figuring out how to Live Binders next.

  32. Curation Tools: From the list of popular curation tools I have only used Flipboard and Pinterest. I used Pinterest the most to gain inspiration for setting up my classroom and projects that can be added to the curriculum. I also use it for personal use such as inspiration for decorating my apartment. A curation tool I will use in the future is LiveBinder because I love the idea of having an extra space to store my work and research.

  33. The only tool that I currently use from the list is pinterest and I have found that it is really beneficial to get ideas for more creative and artistic lessons. Pinterest is filled with DIY ideas many of which are education related and can be used to enhance lessons. Pinterest also is a great organizational tool because you can make different boards of different categories and pin different posts to them so that you can go back and look at what you think will be beneficial. It also a similar to Twitter in that you repin posts and can post your own ideas that can get repinned so it has a lot of potential to spread meaningful information. I personally find Nuzzel to be super interesting and have never used anything like it. The fact that Nuzzel sends you daily emails with curated information is so much more helpful that just randomly scrolling through other social media where you really have no idea what you are going to see and do not even know what you are missing out on.

  34. Responding to Prompt 1, I like the idea of using Pinterest. For one, Pinterest seems to be a safe space for students to learn. Educators often have to worry about the content that students may see on the internet, but I don’t think that that should be a problem with Pinterest. Furthermore, it is visually appealing and engaging for students. Many of the curation tools for students are very boring to look at, and I think that using the colorful Pinterest would be good for student engagement. In addition to Pinterest, I’ve always loved Flipboard. Flipboard is a great way to subscribe to different information, and can be used by students of any age. I’ve learned a lot from different Flipboard subscriptions, and I think that students could learn a lot from it as well.

  35. I currently use Pinterest and Evernote. I use Pinterest because of the creative and visual ideas that are shared, this is really good at keeping me engaged and I can see some really great ideas. Evernote is just one of those great tools to use in the classroom. I would like to try the LiveBinder as this is a great tool for organizing, which is something that I really like. You can have all your resources, tools and notes compiled into one organized binder.

  36. I am currently using Pinterest. I love the visuals that it provides and the eye-catching details make it easy to find DIYs and Classroom projects that would interest me. As I read through the provided list of curation tools, I found Edublogs and Flipboards to be particularly interesting. Both would be a good way to through out lesson plans that other teachers may benefit from.

  37. I actually don’t use any of the curation tools mentioned in this step. I’ve been on pinterest a few times, but I don’t use it consistently. I can see myself using it in the future though. I can also see myself creating a blog and reading other people’s blogs as well. Blogs are a great way to easily access information. If the person blogging is a reliable source, then it is almost certain that the information being presented can prove to be valuable in the future. Pinterest can also provide cool ideas in a fun way. I think I’ll look into using both as my professional career progresses.

  38. The only curation tool that I have used from the suggestions is Pinterest. I love using Pinterest I get awesome ideas for activities to do for certain lessons. I have used it to find different social emotional development activity while in college. One of the tools that I would like to try is LiveBinders, I think that it would be a good way to keep me organized, and a good place where I can keep all my resources in one place. #teac295a

  39. The tool I use the most frequently for my lessons/classroom is Pinterest! Not only to post curated content that I come up with myself, but to search and find other teachers/educators content as well. It is always an incredible resource to use when looking for some classroom inspiration or to help other educators out by posting your own ideas/content. I do not post as often as I would like to with my own content, but once I get my own classroom I’m sure it will happen more often!

  40. The tool I use the most frequently is Pinterest. Not only to post curated content but to track and explore others’ content as well. It can be a great resource to use when looking for inspiration or when publishing your own. I am still trying to get the hang of the organization aspect of the network/app but it is a work in progress that I am thoroughly enjoying and getting the hang of!

  41. I have been using curation tools in my classroom. My favorite one to use would have to be that of blogs. Blogs offer so much information on so many different topics so it keeps things interesting for the students in my class.

  42. I would like to start using Pinterest in the future for educational resources and helping enhance my PLN. I have a Pinterest account, but I never even thought to use it for my professional development!

  43. I use Pinterest a lot and I think it is a great resource to use. You can use it for so many different things like, recipes to hands on activities. You can also organize the things that you find by putting them into different boards.

  44. I use Pinterest almost daily to get some of the best Student-Centered, exploration tasks that are available to teachers all over the world. It also helps give creative ideas as to how to teach concepts that are much harder to grasp. I hope to one day be more involved with a tool like Diigo. I have used something similar to this called BlackBoard but not all platforms are the same.

  45. One tool that I use on a continuous basis is Pinterest. I enjoy using Pinterest because it allows me to keep different boards that are useful visuals for my classroom. I enjoy using Pinterest for anything from classroom themes to ideas for my lessons. Another tool I am very interested in using is LiveBinder. It seems like a very efficient tool to keep all my resources in a central place like Pinterest. I enjoy having a central hub where I can keep everything in one place so that I can access it easily.

  46. I had no idea how many curation tools were out there. I knew Pinterest was a thing but I am thoroughly surprised by how many options educators have to improve their PNL. So excited to try new tools!

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