Teaching with Content Curation

Content curation is a concept used by teachers to gather resources online, chose the resources most relevant to the lesson, and ultimately the class as a whole, and put them in a safe and usable area for their students to use at a later date. The students use these sites as part of their lesson because the teacher shared the sites with the students. Material is not created in this process, the information is simply gathered and then presented in a logical fashion.

In the article I read about this topic, entitled Teaching with Content Curation, the featured teacher, Hauna Zaich, browsed the internet for different sites dealing with topics for her 8th-10th grade English classes. When she found such sites, she would organize them into a folder or binder online called live binders such as these examples, and later integrate these sites into her lesson plans. Not only that, but she shared each site with her students and their parents so they could use them outside of the classroom. On top of all of this, Zaich also taught the student how to search for sites on their own. The reason Zaich did this was to prepare her students for life out in the real world in the work force and in their lives in general.

In my classroom, I want to be able to utilize the live binders and content curation in different aspects of each lesson. For example, when it comes to research papers, I can look online, find the different sites which are relevant, enter them into the live binder and share it with my students. I hope that in this way, I will teach the students how to look properly and critically for the right type of information which will only help them, not hinder them.

While teaching my lessons, I will include several interactive content forms. I will have several different SMART Notebook lessons which contains six different types of multimedia. Rosetta Stone has a demo for anyone who has not yet decided if it is the way they want to learn another language. You will need to enter your email in order to continue with the demo. Rosetta Stone is incredible. They use still images and audio to help you learn what each picture is. As you continue to learn the right answers, the higher the level will go. This is a valuable way to learn. You learn at your own pace. There is the option to have a workbook to go along with whatever language you are learning.

At this time, I am going to discuss the challenges and key trends from the 2012 K-12 Horizon Report.  One of the challenges teachers are going to run into while attempting to reach digital learners is the abundance of information and relationships which come from the internet. Being able to determine whether the information that is presented is credible information is very difficult. Also, we as teachers cannot craft our lessons to be created in one way and every student be able to learn the necessary information. This means that each teacher needs to take into account each students learning style and design the lesson to fit each style of learning into it at the same time. A key trend that was touched on in the horizon report is the BYOD. This is a program called “Bring Your Own Device”. In this program, each student is asked to bring their own electronic device such as an iPod or computer from home to use at school. This allows the money given to the program to buy a device for the students who don’t already have one of their own. This cuts the amount of spending the program has to do since the budget is very low.

The challenge and key trend mentioned above effect me in certain ways. First off, I need to be able to determine how many of the online information is credible before I send my students off to learn it as truth. I am not the only teacher who has to deal with this, teachers all over the globe have to deal with this information credibility. BYOD effects me personally in the fact that my students will be using their devices to have ease in finding the books they will need for the class or writing papers that are assigned. The rest of the world has to deal with this as well because they might have to be extra careful as to how much access they allow the devices to be brought into the class.

All in all content curation is important in every aspect of life, not only in teaching. The skills we teach our students in the classroom carry over into their lives in the work force and their home life. Therefore, we need to be extra careful and fully aware at what type of information we are allowing them to have access to and how we help them to detect sites full of false information.