Chapter 4: Curation in School Libraries | Valenza | Library Technology Reports The school librarians featured in this chapter describe the value of curation to a school’s learning culture. Their efforts ensure that their investment in e-books, databases, and homegrown instructional content is scaled, embedded, and discoverable whenever students need it. Their efforts support flipped and hybrid learning. They use new strategies to display and juxtapose books and other media face-out in imaginative genre gatherings perhaps never before physically arranged. Curation for Students Shannon McClintock Miller, Van Meter (IA) School (May 22, 2014) Teachers and librarians see the value of developing and modeling the creation of dashboards of resources or launchpads for their learners. SMM: Symbaloo, the amazing digital social bookmarking tool, has become one that we cannot live without at Van Meter School. Ann Yawornitsky, Wilson School District, West Lawn, PA (February 25, 2014) BB: How do you define curation? Why reinvent the wheel? Curation for Students and by Students K.
8 High-Quality OER Collections -- THE Journal Resource Spotlight 8 High-Quality OER Collections Finding high-quality open educational resources used to be a challenge, but a number of curated OER collections have made the task much easier for educators. 1. CK-12 Foundation is a nonprofit organization that offers free, standards-aligned content in STEM subjects, including digital textbooks and simulations. The content reportedly works across all platforms and devices, including iPads, Chromebooks and Android tablets. CK-12 also offers tools to help teachers flip their classroom by creating groups, assigning content and monitoring achievement through a teacher dashboard. An interactive simulation of centripetal force from CK-12. 2. Founded by Sun Microsystems more than a decade ago, Curriki became an independent nonprofit in 2006 and is one of the first sources of open educational resources for the K-12 community. Its corporate sponsors include AT&T, Chevron, and Oracle. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Chapter 3: Curation in Public Libraries | Valenza | Library Technology Reports We encountered a refreshing playfulness and a willingness to experiment and create in our public library conversations. Interviews with Billy Parrott of New York Public Library’s Picture Collection and with Amy Sonnie, Teen Outreach Librarian, and Meredith Sires, Teen Services department intern, of Oakland Public Library, reveal how social media curation, particularly using Pinterest and Instagram, can highlight areas of the collection and engage communities. Billy Parrott’s curation involves items that are not actually in the collection but are related to it and designed to create conversations around it. He demonstrates the role personality plays in social media curation, showing that your brand has the potential to reach well beyond your initially conceived audience. In addition to engaging teens with their creative social media curation efforts, the OPL TeenZone librarians value the professional collaborative efforts they see in the youth services community. BP: Do what you love.
OER Commons OER Commons forges alliances between trusted content providers and creative users and re-users of OER. In addition to content partnerships, OER Commons, and its creator, ISKME, builds strategic relationships with organizations, consortia, states, districts, and others, in order to develop innovation and new research focused on OER, to advance the field of open education, and to build models for its sustainability. Supported in part by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, ISKME, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, created OER Commons as part of the Foundation’s worldwide OER initiative. From content, to infrastructure, to policies, many individuals and organizations work to make open content for all a reality.
Chapter 9: Conclusion: Issues and Trends | Valenza | Library Technology Reports Should we accept them, librarians have unlimited opportunities for leadership in social media curation, functioning as guides, information brokers, interpreters, storytellers, innovators, teachers, marketers, networkers, and connectors. What Maria Popova calls “an increasingly valuable form of creative and intellectual labor, a form of authorship” is an area we cannot ignore. In our areas of expertise, for users we know so well, we should not be abdicating these activities to others. In his Fifth Law of Library Science, Ranganathan embraces the notion of agility. Social Media Curation Is a Thing Our conversations with librarians across ALA’s divisions point to potential. Our relevance is connected to our roles as content filters for our communities—professional and institutional. Our case-study interviews point to the notion that social media curation liberates librarians from levels of editorial restraints. Our digital efforts transform brick-and-mortar practice. Keeping It Fresh
VR, PBL, and OERs: Four High Hopes for Learning with Edtech in the New School Year Using technology in schools is no longer just about preparing our students for college and career. Not only do they need the skills to navigate and utilize technology, but they need to understand how technology can connect them with people, places, and resources that were previously unreachable. In 2014, I wrote about strategies for edtech success in the new school year, and in 2015, I wrote about edtech teaching trends for the new school year. Well, I’ve spotted some tools and strategies that have amazing potential to empower students and teachers to engage and learn more with the world beyond their school. High Hope #1: Student-Created VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) Where we are: The buzz around virtual and augmented reality is hard to ignore. My high hope: Why not show students how to create with VR and AR? High Hope #2: Project-Based Learning That is Real-World High Hope #3: Coding Can Break Out of Technology Classes Where we are: Since the U.S.
The 5 Models Of Content Curation Curation has always been an underrated form of creation. The Getty Center in Los Angeles is one of the most frequently visited museums in America – and started as a private art collection from one man (J. Paul Getty) who had a passion for art. One of the hottest trends in social media right now is content curation – thanks in no small part to the leading efforts of several thought leaders actively promoting the idea. What Is Content Curation? Back in 2009 I published a blog post called the “Manifesto For The Content Curator” which predicted that this role would be one of the fastest growing and most important jobs of the future. Content Curation is a term that describes the act of finding, grouping, organizing or sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific issue. The 5 Models Of Content Curation Content curation is certainly an emerging space and one where more and more thought leaders will continue to share their voices. Interested in learning more about content curation?
OER Commons Creating with Open Author Why create with Open Author? Remixable Improve and change: remix resources to customize learning for your needs Curate-able Curate resources for a specific group or task using groups and folders Findable Search and find: get your resources out there, and find what you need Open Author Tool Step 1: Create sections Step 2: Create student facing content Step 3: Create instructor-only content Step 4: Revise and rearrange sections Step 5: You're making amazing OER Update, customize and improve OER by remixing existing resources to make the best OER for your needs Coming Soon! New Published Views Instructor view Know exactly how the lesson should go with instructor view. Audience view Make your lesson shine with engaging content in our audience view.
HyperDocs and the teacher librarian The concept of HyperDocs is spreading all over edtech land. HyperDocs are perfect opportunities to grow teacher librarian/ classroom teacher partnerships. A true extension of what TLs do or should be doing in a hyperlinked information landscape, HyperDocs are all about curation and collaboration, instruction based on engaged inquiry, as well as our mission to inspire learning communities to think, create, share and grow. While it’s quite possible you’ve been building HyperDocs-like instruction for years on a variety of platforms, we can now connect our work to an accepted model and a growing and generous community! What are HyperDocs? According to the HyperDocs site, HyperDocs, a transformative, interactive Google Doc replacing the worksheet method of delivering instruction, is the ultimate change agent in the blended learning classroom. I recently interviewed the three teachers behind the HyperDocs model. Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton and Sarah Landis ask the simple, but provocative question:
A new framework to guide OER curation leadership Curation is one of our Shared Foundations. It is also identified as a leadership area on the Future Ready Librarians Framework. But what does it look like when the school librarian really dives into digital curation? And what does it look like when the librarian, armed with a rich OER toolkit, regularly curates urgently needed, high-quality, flexible, no- or low-cost digital tools and content across the curriculum, expertly modeling that practice for the entire learning community? Over the past couple of years, I’ve had the privilege of serving on the advisory board of the IMLS study, Exploring OER Curation And The Role of School Librarians. One major early outcome of this work is The Role of School Librarians in OER Curation: A Framework Guide to Practice. The team research team asked the the following questions: What does OER curation look like for participating school librarians? The document lists a critical rationale for OER Curation: The new Framework Guide to Practice includes:
Tool literacy as a new process I’ve been thinking a bit about the notion of app smashing and the way we introduce learning challenges in our classrooms and libraries. And I am thinking there’s a thinking process going on that we’re not thinking about nearly enough. The Evolution of the Desk by Best Reviews Introducing a tool and saying you are going to use this tool to tell this story is kinda like saying go to page 347 and do exercises three through five. The notion of app smashing was coined by Greg Kulowiec (@gregkulowiec) of EdTechTeacher Loosely, it’s the process of using multiple applications together in order to to complete complex tasks or projects. I think the word process is important. We need to learn how to leverage the tools on our new desks. Affordances are the possible ways a tools could be used by an individual in a particular context. I’ve been engaging in a bit of metaphorical thinking around tool literacy: It’s a bit like building a piña colada out of Jelly Belly jelly beans.
*Curation Situations: Let us count the ways Curation is a funny word. When my colleagues and I wrote our Social Media Curation Library Technology Report for ALA, we struggled with a definition. The folks we interviewed across library land curated in several different ways and we used the term curation differently depending on current community needs or where they were in any particular project. Back in 2014, our interviews and surveys led us to a taxonomy of digital curation. K12 digital curation is about getting our users/students/teachers to the good stuff, pointing them to content and resources they might not themselves discover with their own intuitive strategies. Curation allows us to scale our practice and reach our community 24/7 at their points of need. Social media curation efforts can help us fuel participatory culture as we build and connect communities. Curating with kids As students curate, they make decisions about authority and bias. Curating OER Beyond the basketball metaphor . . .
*Best Practices in Curation The Key Commitment of school librarians within the AASL Shared Foundation of Curate is defined in the AASL Standards as “making meaning for oneself and others by collecting, organizing, and sharing resources of personal relevance” (AASL, 2018, p. 94). I have been working on unpacking the Curate Shared Foundation during the first semester of the school year, reflecting on what the AASL Standards bring up as curation best practices, and on the Domains, Competencies, and alignments the standards hold up for us to achieve. For many of us, getting started is the hard part, so I have come up with a few ideas and resources for taking the first steps toward making these best practices part of your everyday work. Here are the best practices from the Curate Shared Foundation from p. 101-102 of the National School Library Standards book and a few ideas for implementation: The September/October 2013 issue of Knowledge Quest has a whole host of great advice on how to get this done. Work Cited