MODULE 2: CURATION
What is curation?
"make meaning for oneself and others by collecting, organizing, and sharing resources of personal relevance"
(American Association of School Librarians, 2018).
We curate for life and for learning. Have you ever made a playlist of your favourite songs? That is curation. Like a museum or art curator, you select the most useful content, categorise and organise it, and share it with others. Good curation involves finding the best material and organising it in a way that makes new meaning.
Watch the video below to discover more about the value of content curation and the key principle that content curators apply - adding their point of view.
REFLECTION
Can you think of things you curate?
(Centerline Digital, 2015).
You can curate information for your school work, topics that you find interesting, your social media, and your digital identity in order to create new ideas and products. You can also curate with other people and follow and use their curations too.
You will learn more about creating new ideas and works in Module 4.
What is the purpose of curation?
While information overload is not a new concept, the internet has made it very easy for large amounts of content to be created. This has led to a rapid increase in information, which grows every day. This amount of information can be dizzying.
Curation focuses on quality not quantity and it replaces noise with clarity (Briggs, 2016; Rosenbaum, 2011). Curation helps to overcome information overload by helping you sift and filter the information to find the best. Plus, a curator adds their point of view to the sources by annotating and tagging, which makes them even more useful. These skills help us to manage the information we come in contact with.
EXPLORE
Explore the internet live stats site to see how much information is produced every second. Are you surprised?
What curation tools can I use?
Some programs do not allow children under the age of 13 to create accounts due to the United States' Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, which prohibits the collection of sensitive information from children (O'Keeffe Clarke-Pearson, & Council on Communications and Media, 2011). However, some programs only need parent or teacher permission. Different countries have different laws to protect children's information online, so it's important to check the website's Terms of Service, or “Terms”, or Privacy Policy and be familiar with local laws.
EXPLORE
Explore Spotify's Terms and Conditions of Use.
Scroll to the age requirements chart.
How old do you have to be in your country to use Spotify?
What are the stages of curation?
The curation process can be broken up into three key behaviours; search, store, and share.
Explore the interactive video below to learn more about the six stages of curation and the key skills needed to effectively curate content. You will practice these skills in the activities later in this module.
DID YOU CATCH EVERY BEE?
Are you ready to put your curation skills to the test?
Click the buttons below to navigate to the next step.
Use the infographic below to review the six stages of curation that were explored in the interactive video.
This is a simple summary of the key skills of curation and questions to consider when creating your curations.
ACTIVITY 1
Now it's time to put your skills to the test
SCENARIO: Your teacher has set an inquiry task about "Rare and Endangered Animals" and you must use high-quality sources to learn about the topic. Your teacher has asked you to evaluate this website and decide if it is an appropriate source to use.
1. Use your lateral reading skills and the SCRAP test questionnaire to evaluate the credibility
and usefulness of the website.
You may also like to use Google Reverse Image Search to test the credibility of one or
more images used on the site.
Right click the image, then select "Search Google for Image".
2. Then, fill in the form below to summarise your opinion on the website.
This work was created by Noni Harrison and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
ACTIVITY 2
1. Click the "Join Now" hyperlink on the Digital Detectives button below to join the Diigo Group "Digital Detectives - Fake News".
2. Then, follow the Stages of Curation to select, store and share a digital source that addresses the Inquiry Question: What are the effects of fake news on teenagers?
Don't forget to collaborate with other group members and share your ideas.
Now you're ready to learn more about collective curation. Move onto the next module using the button below.
