Curation is the “ability to find, to filter, to evaluate, to annotate, to choose which sources are valuable” (Valenza, Boyer , Curtis, 2014). In our information-rich age, not only is it necessary to curate, but creating content from curated resources is an excellent way to consolidate understanding and provides students with the opportunity to think critically and creatively. I have written about Content Curation and Digital Leadership before. I also include curation tools in the chapter, “The Other Social Media Tools” in Social LEADia because I believe that Storify, and curation tools like it…
provide a great way for students to summarize and synthesize learning by allowing them to create something new out of any online content, including social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Google+. What I love most about curating tools is that several people can draw from very similar information and their final products can end up completely different–the results are based entirely on a person’s selection and interpretation of the resource, making the story unique to their learning.
With that in mind, you could ask students to draw from a specific hashtag connected to a movement, an organization, an author, or a politician and then have them summarize their interpretation of the main messages. Older students could generate a thesis and use the artifacts and examples they find to prove it. Or, better yet, you could turn the traditional essay on its head by having students use a curation tool to write a persuasive “essay” (page 147).
Here is an image I created that shows how a few curation tools can support literacy.
Wakelet
So with Storify gone, Wakelet looks like a great replacement tool for all learners to curate information. It has a simple interface. Unlike Storify, you need to grab external links, but a useful Chrome extension means you can use Wakelet to curate all your resources in one place with the option to create wakes from them at any time.
Randall Sampson, who loved Storify as much as I did, created a wake about how to create a wake. Check it out here.
Moving your Storify Stories to Wakelet
Check out this video on how to verify and import stories from storify to Wakelet. I very simply transferred my stories over.
What it DOES not tell you is that you can exit the app and Wakelet will email you when your stories have been fully imported.
What is a curation tool you use to curate social media links? Do you have a good alternative to Storify? Would love to hear about them in the comments!
Sources
Valenza, J. K., Boyer, B. L., & Curtis, D. (2014). Curation outside the library world. Library Technology Reports, 50(7), 51.
