CurationPlatforms

Curation platforms are multiplying in a way that almost mirrors the information flood they were designed to remedy. They come in a variety of flavors. Here are a few of my favorite tools divided into two of those flavors.

For real-time curation (platforms that rely on continual flow of realtime feeds, news, and socially-generated content):

Scoop.it, ([|http://scoop.it)] is one of the most popular and fastest growing tools for curating an online magazine. Scoop.it requires regular care and feeding. Scoop.it curators must regularly select, discard, and may choose to annotate automatic scoop feeds managed by keywords. Used as a search tool, the More Awesome Topics page (http://www.scoop.it/topic/findmore) allows a search or a browse of trending, featured and popular scoops.

The little green box listing Scoop.it Score is a metric for measuring topic quality based on dynamism, depth, and audience engagement.

Though students can search without registration, registered users can follow those topics they are interested in, and suggest content to other curators. Students may follow or subscribe to the RSS feed for any [|Scoop.it] they find useful. A bookmarklet is available for handy posting.

Paper.li ([]) is probably the easiest strategy for creating a media-rich newspaper of tweets and feeds and hashtags. Curators are allowed up to ten different streams of content—Twitter usernames, Twitter hashtags,Twitter lists, keywords on Facebook oitter or Google+, RSS feeds, Google+ users. It is also beautifully searchable. The Newstand ([]) allows you to discover papers and curators. Results are listed by relevance with number of views displayed as a metric of influence. If you are interested in a paper you may subscribe or embed your selected papers. A bookmarklet is available for handy posting.

Delicious Stacks ([]) introduced a visual magazine element to the already popular social bookmarking features last September. Results are listed with tags, and numbers of saves and views. With a Delicious account, students may share or follow Stacks.

Pearltrees ([]) offers a community for visually sharing resources built on creating networks (or trees) of interlinked pearls that display and burst open like interactive mindmaps. Mouse over a Pearltree to see its number of pearls and hits, and the name of the curator or curation team. Trees may be linked to; shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+; or embedded.

Themeefy ([]) allows its users to archive Web content, as well as their own content, and to publish their Themes as personalized magazines that display as slideshows. The Themeefy Library[| http://themeefy.com/library#]) is searchable and browsable by broad category. Themeefy publications may be linked to, bookmarked, followed, and embedded. A Themeefy bookmarklet is available for handy posting.

Storify ([]) allows you to build new, coherent narratives, social stories around aggregated network content. Search for, drag and drop, and reorder relevant media elements from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, and more and add headlines, introductions, and text to any story. You may easily edit or delete elements.

Storify ([]) stories can be embedded, connected to blogs, or published in Tumblr or Posterous. You are encouraged to notify all the people quoted in your story. Storify’s front page displays current and hot stories and allows users to search the Storify network.

News.me ([]), for email or iPhone, automatically analyzes links shared by your friends to push the relevant news to you in a display with publisher, headline, photo and comments. I rely on this one for professional updates.

Pinterest ([]) users organize and display visual content in the form of pin boards. Use them to gather infographics, maps, examples of bulletin boards, book covers. Pins may be annotated. It is fascinating to browse pinboards created by others who share your interests. Pinterest encourages its users to respect intellectual property when pinning ([]) A Pin it bookmarklet is available for handy posting.

Bundlr ([]) is similar to Pinterest. It allows users (clippers) to login with Facebook, Twitter, or Google and create and share topic pages of photos, text clips, videos, tweets, code snippets, and documents. You may opt to find, follow, and collaborate on the Bundles of friends and colleagues. A Bundlr browser button is available for handy posting. Bundles are easily shared and embedded and may be resorted by date and view.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For hybrid curation (platforms that rely on both realtime feeds and the curation of more static, selected content. For a more traditional pathfinder approach)

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">EduClipper ([]) School-friendly and student-safe, Adam Bellow's new platform promises allow us to videos, links, lesson plans, anything and create clipboards to share with colleagues or students.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">LiveBinders ([]), though not really a real-time curation tool, offers a three-ring binder approach to gathering and organizing websites, documents, narrative, media and more. [|Livebinders]‘ search results display with a five-star user rating system and number of views. Once a useful binder is discovered, users can embed it nearly anywhere. Students with [|LiveBinders] accounts may add others’ binders to their own shelves.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">LibGuides ([]) is used as a curation tool by librarians all over the globe. Though it is a subscription tool, it is my tool of choice for curation for my building. I use LibGuides to curate instruction, promote reading, archive student work, present professional development, nearly everything that makes my practice transparent. Even if you are not a [|LibGuides] subscriber, you can benefit from the Springshare community’s shared resources. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I know that I cannot create a guide for each of my student’s research interests, but some wonderfully knowledgeable librarian, usually a subject expert, already has. Students can search the entire Community or limit their search by type of library. Once they have selected a Guide, students can search for specific content within the Guide itself. Results display with tags and date of last update. And they are generally curated by library specialists. Note: While some of the Guides’ resources may include subscription content, available exclusively to the creating institution, much of the content is web-based and free. Students may bookmark Guides or subscribe to them for RSS alert updates. A Post to LibGuides bookmarklet is available for handy posting.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Mentor Mob ([]) Build sequential, annotated playlists of files, websites, video, quizzes and more. Playlists can be crowdsourced or made private.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Mightybell.com ([]) Create private and public spaces for collaboration, conversation and curation. Include chat, questions, links,videos, documents and more.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sqworl ([]) is a very simple tool for gathering together annotated thumbnails, to visualize and share bookmarks. You can search the community, share Sqworls on social networks, and choose to follow the Sqworl groups of others. An Add to Sqworl bookmarklet is available for handy posting.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Only2Clicks ([]) allows users to aggregate and annotate thumbnails of related websites and organize those list in tabs. An Add to only2clicks bookmarklet is available for handy posting.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Symbaloo ([]) or SymbalooEDU ([]) allows users to gather their favorite websites into webmixes, a grid of little tiles, and to collect various webmixes under a system of tabs. A Symbaloo Bookmarker is available for handy posting.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Themeefy ([])