One of my favorite reference books is the J. I. Rodale’s The Synonym Finder. I am forever fascinated by shades of meaning of words. Today I am distracted by the word curator. Among the synonyms tendered by Rodale are guardian, custodian, concierge, protector, preserver, steward, and manager.
To what degree is a professor a curator? Without doubt one role I play as a university professor is sifting through vast amounts of content, ideas, and ways of knowing and of learning about specific topics (e.g. my area of expertise, social psychology) and attempting to share with others in a coherent way what I have learned. There are myriad tools available to discover and manage digital content. I’ve recently focused on the utility of two such content curation tools identified and explained in Jane Hart’s marvelous A Practical Guide to the Top 100 tools for Learning.
Paper.li allows one to create a daily newspaper consisting of stories shared by persons followed on Facebook and Twitter and other online news sources. Therein lies both its strength and its weakness—one must carefully curate and be wary of the credibility of the sources.
Scoop.it allows one to create an online magazine and discover others’ curated online magazines. A challenge is maintaining it (updating and adding value through thoughtful comments).
Always inspired by Jane Hart, I need to sort out how to continue to use tools of the Modern Professional Learner. I just joined this resource. I am in the process of winnowing my news feeds.
I agree with Leah on the topic of a professor being a curator. Understanding what knowledge is useful for their students can help benefit them for their future occupations. I value the advice my professors have given me and I have used it throughout my daily life. I find the magazine/newspaper websites fascinating and I’m intrigued to learn more. I noticed the other day on Facebook they started indicating which posts may not be credible. Hopefully, more social websites will follow suit to prevent “fake news” from occurring.
Explore the magazine/newspaper websites and let me know if any would be a valuable tool to master. Is there value in using an RSS feed like Feedly or kindred apps or does that just become overwhelming information glut?
I believe a professor is a curator- they must protect their students and preserve the knowledge that they are passing along. I find the idea of creating a daily newspaper kind of cool and interesting as well. Although I agree, making the time to continuously complete these tasks and update them is a difficult feat.
But you, too can curate.