Investigating curation tools has been an interesting experience. It is actually something I revisit periodically looking for the one thing that is going to make everything fall into place – the perfect organization plan.
In the past I’ve looked mostly at organizational tools like Evernote and Dropbox for keeping my personal and professional life organized. They are both full-featured and very searchable.
I’ve been looking forward to exploring tools that add the annotation piece as well. I love it when class assignments ‘require’ me to spend time doing what I enjoy. It started when I was getting my Library degree and I HAD to read loads of children’s books for homework. And with this class I’ve had to read tons of blogs, check out these tools, and in the process read even more blogs, watch videos and Ted talks, read book reviews – it’s fantastic!
In the process of investigating curation tools I was surprised at how different they were. Most of the apps and tools I use with my students share a lot of similarities – in functionality, icons, and the like. I found some of these tools to be quite different from one another – and not near as intuitive as I had expected. I appreciated articles like the one by Aaron Tay that compared a few of the tools for us. Even though that led me to check out RebelMouse – how could you not check out something with that great name!
Pinterest is not my favorite. The boards I’ve made are fine, but there is a lot of duplication when you look through other peoples’ boards. They might have the same pin over and over. Also, in the education arena it seems like many, many pins are paid offerings from TPT or something similar. Not what I’m looking for when trolling for ideas. I used EduClipper for a different class. I liked the capabilities and focus on education but even after using it for awhile I’m still confused over a ‘clip’ versus a ‘board.’
I spent some time this week looking at Flipboard. To be perfectly honest – I was always a Zite girl and my husband was a fan of Flipboard. Zite seemed to find unusual items that I wouldn’t have found on my own while Flipboard seemed to locate the usual links. When Flipboard acquired Zite it took all of the fun out of it for me. I revisited Flipboard this week but couldn’t quite get past it not being Zite. I like ThingLink but I see it more as a presentation or learning tool than for curation. I want to see and be able to read my annotations easily and I think with a large volume that might be hard to do on ThingLink.
I decided Scoop.it was the way to go. It seemed to fit my working topic, allowing me to curate all sorts of videos, blog posts, websites, RSS feeds and more. I like the way my annotation are right there, clearly labeled. That should really help me keep track of my scoops. I’ll be looking for information to support continuing my little library makerspace past the current year. I was able to start it up last month due to unusual availability in my schedule. It already has proven to be so valuable for teaching, learning, exploring and creating that I need to figure out how to make it an ongoing project. So I’ll be looking for research on the benefits of a makerspace in the elementary school as well as how to collect data to show its effectiveness.
Here’s my Scoop.it
Image by ajcann.wordpress.com CC BY-SA 2.0
In the past I’ve looked mostly at organizational tools like Evernote and Dropbox for keeping my personal and professional life organized. They are both full-featured and very searchable.
I’ve been looking forward to exploring tools that add the annotation piece as well. I love it when class assignments ‘require’ me to spend time doing what I enjoy. It started when I was getting my Library degree and I HAD to read loads of children’s books for homework. And with this class I’ve had to read tons of blogs, check out these tools, and in the process read even more blogs, watch videos and Ted talks, read book reviews – it’s fantastic!
In the process of investigating curation tools I was surprised at how different they were. Most of the apps and tools I use with my students share a lot of similarities – in functionality, icons, and the like. I found some of these tools to be quite different from one another – and not near as intuitive as I had expected. I appreciated articles like the one by Aaron Tay that compared a few of the tools for us. Even though that led me to check out RebelMouse – how could you not check out something with that great name!
Pinterest is not my favorite. The boards I’ve made are fine, but there is a lot of duplication when you look through other peoples’ boards. They might have the same pin over and over. Also, in the education arena it seems like many, many pins are paid offerings from TPT or something similar. Not what I’m looking for when trolling for ideas. I used EduClipper for a different class. I liked the capabilities and focus on education but even after using it for awhile I’m still confused over a ‘clip’ versus a ‘board.’
I spent some time this week looking at Flipboard. To be perfectly honest – I was always a Zite girl and my husband was a fan of Flipboard. Zite seemed to find unusual items that I wouldn’t have found on my own while Flipboard seemed to locate the usual links. When Flipboard acquired Zite it took all of the fun out of it for me. I revisited Flipboard this week but couldn’t quite get past it not being Zite. I like ThingLink but I see it more as a presentation or learning tool than for curation. I want to see and be able to read my annotations easily and I think with a large volume that might be hard to do on ThingLink.
I decided Scoop.it was the way to go. It seemed to fit my working topic, allowing me to curate all sorts of videos, blog posts, websites, RSS feeds and more. I like the way my annotation are right there, clearly labeled. That should really help me keep track of my scoops. I’ll be looking for information to support continuing my little library makerspace past the current year. I was able to start it up last month due to unusual availability in my schedule. It already has proven to be so valuable for teaching, learning, exploring and creating that I need to figure out how to make it an ongoing project. So I’ll be looking for research on the benefits of a makerspace in the elementary school as well as how to collect data to show its effectiveness.
Here’s my Scoop.it
Image by ajcann.wordpress.com CC BY-SA 2.0