Digital Curation Tools

Digital curation tools are a way for people to collect, organise and share online artifacts. With the rapid growth of information available on the Internet, digital tools provide users with a succinct way in which to search for, store and share categorized information (Flintoff, Mellow & Picket Clark: 2014).

Jenkins et.al (2009) suggests that digital curation enables ‘average users’ to engage more easily with media content, something which I can relate to. Until recently, my use of curation tools has been limited mostly to Pinterest. This curation tool met my needs perfectly from both a personal and professional standpoint. It’s easy to use and is visually very appealing so that’s the tool I have been using. Last year, I added ScoopIt! to my list of curation tools for professional purposes. ScoopIt! allows you to annotate each online artifact, making it perfect for digital annotated bibliographies.

In my search for digital curation tools, I came across a fantastic website called Cool Tools For School which has some useful reading materials on curation tools and a great round up of digital curation tools that can be used in the classroom. If you’re a beginner like myself, this is a great place to visit.

As I have begun exploring the range of curation tools available, one of the things that I have learnt is that some of these tools have features which allow them to be used as a way in which to collaborate with others, thus enabling one to create ‘professional learning networks’ (Flintoff et al: 2014). Scoop.It is one such curation tool that has this feature. I’m yet to use it for this purpose so I am keen to revisit it again.

This week, I began exploring the curation tool Diigo.I have never heard of this before now however it is quite simple to save information from the Internet and I can see that this will be useful tool going forwards. It has a collaborative element to it and my goal in the coming week will be to learn how to use this function in a meaningful way that will support my learning and teaching.

 

References

Flintoff, K., Mellow, P. & Pickett Clark, K. (2014). Digital curation: Opportunities for learning, teaching, research and professional development. In Transformative, innovative and engaging. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Teaching Learning Forum, 30-31 Jan. 2014, Perth: The University of Western Australia.

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Weigel, M., Clinton, K. & Robinson, A. J. (2009). Confronting the
challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st Century. A report for the
MacArthur Foundation. Boston: MIT Press. http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/free_
download/9780262513623_Confronting_the_Challenges.pdf

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