It’s summer here in Sydney, and anyone with any sense is flipping in the water or scooping sand at the beach. I’m not so lucky, being wired to the world via my workdesk. But like many of us I am not alone, and for that reason curating content to revisit, and share along the way is part of what I do.
In the social media sense, content curation is the organizing, filtering and “making sense of” information on the web and sharing the very best pieces of content with your network that you’ve cherry picked for them .
It comes down to organizing your sources, knowing which of them are trust worthy, and seeing patterns.
So for educators it comes down to keeping up the pace in adopting these strategies and using tools to publish curated content in the sense of ‘reporting’ what’s happening. So I see myself doing these things:
- first level curation : curating my own content for myself (my own ‘go-to’ repository with tools like Diigo, Delicious, Evernote, Flipboard, Facebook, Flickr, RSS readers etc, and sharing this because my online tools are socially connected
- second level curation: curating content for others via targetted tweets or Google+ circles, Facebook pages, Facebook groups, wikis, livebinders, etc. (Does Paper.li fit in here seeing as it is automated?), so sharing at this level is a direct extension of the first level of personal curation.
Now I can see a reason for educators to move into third level curation as a form of info-media publishing. Think of this as dynamic content curation that’s about helping keep up with the news. The flow of information through social media is changing:
While we’re dismantling traditional structures of distribution, we’re also building new forms of information dissemination. Content is no longer being hocked, but links are. People throughout the network are using the attention they receive to traffic in pointers to other content, serving as content mediators. Numerous people have become experts as information networkers.
Now I can use all my social networking resources and return information back to my social community at the third level of curation.
Social content curation is about collecting, organising and sharing information – in a new package. I’m no archivist. But I am a digital curator of information for myself, and perhaps for others. Back in 2011 I said that I was interested to see how (what I call) the third level curation evolves. I like the idea of socially connected ways of publishing ‘what’s new’ and ‘what’s newsworthy’ as an ‘aside’ to my ‘go-to’ information repository such as my social bookmarks.
I wrote about Scoop-it, and for quite a time I used Scoop-it quite successfully – for my own purposes and to follow other ‘scoops’.
In 2014 I have largely abandoned Scoop-it – and that is BECAUSE of the way it shares information! I am totally and completely fed up with finding an interesting recommend in my FB page or in my Twitter feed (as and example), from a trusted Scoop-it curator. I completely detest that I HAVE To go to the Scoop first, and THEN to the actual recommended read. This annoys me so much, that I have abandoned using the tool myself so as not to annoy my curation followers in the same manner! If you use Scoop-it and I see your recommend in my media stream – I’m most likely going to ignore it!
Now I am using Flipboard, because it does the same job, in a much nicer format, PLUS it doesn’t force a user back to the whole board. Millions of people use Flipboard to read and collect the news they care about, curating their favorite stories into their own magazines on any topic imaginable. Thousands are using it to create fantastic education resources.
This is magic! If someone is keen to join or follow a Flipboard, then that’s great. But in the meantime, we have a perfect tool at our disposal to create a collection for targetted needs. I’m still experimenting – but I think it’s a great tool.
Endgame. Won.
Thanks to Sue Waters for The flip-a-holic’s ultimate guide to subscribing, curating and sharing using Flipboard. http://theedublogger.com/2013/06/12/flipboard/
Find Judy O’Connell at Flipboard https://flipboard.com/profile/heyjudeonline
Reference: Boyd, D. (2010). Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media. Educause Review, 45(5), 26-28.
Image: cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by David
judyoconnell.com 
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I have become a convert to Flipboard after the frustration of using Scoop.it. Flipboard is definitely more user friendly in my opinion.
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Fascinating article Judy and I appreciate that you shared the curation details of your workflow.
I completely agree with you. I’ve been finding it cumbersome and wondered why I would avoid it. I’ve had the Flipboard app on my phone for a while but I think it’s now time to put it to real use!
I’ve been flip-flopping between Scoop.it and Flipboard for a while now, and I had considered a blog post comparing the two curation tools myself. I’m glad to see that you’ve had the same experience with Scoop.it – I thought maybe it was my lack of experience as a user that caused my frustration.
I’ve been using Flipboard for a while as a reader only. Just added my own magazine this past week. As you mentioned in your blog post, Flipboard is easier to use because I can read the article before deciding whether I want to add it to my magazine. Personally, I much prefer Flipboard over Scoop.it but will continue to browse Scoop.it periodically just to make sure I don’t miss out on any thing.
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I’ve found Scoop.it clunky for various reasons including the redirect through Scoop.it. Unless I’ve missed something, you can only have 5 Scoop.its. That’s limiting for me, eg I have 211 Pinterest boards. I like to have a decent amount of flexibility and control over my curating tools, and so I’ve not been scooping much for a while. Thanks, Judy, for the info about Flipboard. I haven’t used it for a while because I didn’t realise it had many options for curation. Great post as always.
Thanks for the feedback Tania – and 211 Pinterest boards? I am totally amazed by that number and now must visit each of them!
I like your levels of curation – very true. After length testing with Facebook, Learnist, Flipboard, Pinterst, Educlipper and Evernote I came to the same conclusion. Flipboard is the slickest in terms of presentation and end user experience, but does not offer all the functionality, no easy way to search or tag (unless I am missing something). Perhaps the most important aspect is that you choose one platform and stick to it (so that you get a healthy catalogue), then set up ifthisthenthat recipes to push content to other solutions you curate. But then most of the time your audience is consuming the headlines, not necessarily using ‘it’ as a database to find other related articles – that’s what you do as a primary (1st level as you call it) curator. Thanks for the article and keep up the great posts….
Appreciate the comments and the reminder about ifthisthenthat in the mix. I know that Flipboard doesn’t necessarily do all that we might want – but ultimately it’s the annoyance factor that I was motivated to share about. I also find it very easy to use for the task that I need – for subjects.
I also dislike the double-shuffle required in Scoop.it and I like Flipboard, especially on my iPad, but I’m not convinced that Flipboard can offer all that Scoop.it does for the equivalent tasks. Scoop.it seems to have more options for comments, tags, and tracking but perhaps I need to explore Flipboard more.
I do appreciate what Scoop.it can do – but their mechanism for sharing killed it for me and many others. Using it for oneself, and subscribers is fine. Using it to push out a post, and the resulting double-shuffle – well just bad.