Curation Assignment

For this assignment I chose to focus on "Technology Tools and Research for Teaching Academic Research." I chose to use Scoop-it for my curation assignment. Here is my curation. 

To evaluate my curation I used my groups Quality Curation Criteria. Below are the questions our group developed and my responses based on my curation. 

1. What is the purpose of your curation?

My desire for this curation was to provide educators with tools and research that support technology usage when conducting academic research. 21st century learning skills heavily emphasize the importance of student research and knowing appropriate technology tools to use for assessing source credibility, gathering information, and developing quality research. I believe all of the sources in this curation support this purpose. 

2. Which of the five subgroups of curation, or combination thereof, do you intend to use? 

I believe my curation is a combination of distillation and evaluation. It embraces distillation because I sought the most relevant information for this topic as I want to be sure all sources curated are valuable to the viewer. I also believe I used the evaluation process as some of the content in my curation involves people’s reflections of people’s personal opinions posted online. 

3. Have you added credible sites to your RSS feeds or Twitterdecks to track information related to the content? 

I didn’t necessarily add information in regards to the specific authors, but I added some sources to my RSS feed such as wired.com or teachthought.com. As for the Twitterdeck, those sources that sued hashtags I searched in Twitter to see if the content trending was worth following. Some I found valuable and others not so much. 

4. Does your content curation have a variety of source types or is it heavy with one particular medium? 

There is definitely a variety which I think is powerful. I have Prezis, Slideshare, academic journals, blog posts, article, infographics, and a few other source types. 

5. Have you added your own spin, or voice, to the content you have organized and shared?

Yes, for every source I left my own comments to personalize the posting of the source and let viewer of the curation know what value I saw in the individual source. 

6. Is the reproduction and sharing of the content in your curation tailored to your particular audience? 

Absolutely. My goal was to curate information that would be helpful to the 9th grade teachers I work with. My audience is my Professional Learning Community. Since it is teachers I want to severe with this curation I have both a mix of theoretical ideas backed by research combined with resources that educators can use to actually teach academic research in there classrooms.

7. Is the material properly linked and attributed?

Yes, all sources can be clicked on an a new tab will open with the original source. Moreover, all sources show the site to which they came from to professionally attribute the reproduction of the source. 

8. Is any of the language used vague and unprofessional within the attribution?

No, I believe all of the language is concise and academic in nature. 

9. Is a summary of content complete?

Where it is appropriate a summary of the source is included. Most sources however contain an excerpt from the source itself. Others don’t need a summary as the images are self-explanatory. 

10. Is the content organized in a logical way?

I did not follow a particular organizational pattern. The logic behind this is that I find it beneficial for viewers not to be inundated with the same type of information. Mixing academic journals with presentations and info graphics gives viewers the opportunity to make individualized associations with the content. 

11. Has the author written many articles in this particular field?

For each source I conducted research on the authors. Most have published material in the field previously; however, some sources (such as the multimedia presentations) were created by teachers like myself. 

12. Are they a known leader and shown a proven track record?

Those authors published via credible sources show a proven track record with their publication history. The content collected from blogs or other types of professionals may not have a long standing history of published content, but it does not deflate their credibility. 

13. Have I researched in detail when the article was written?

Yes, for all sources I checked the publication date. If I found a source appeared outdated I looked for a more current source. 

14. Is the age of the article make the information still relevant today?

Yes, all content is relevant to today. 

15. Has the curated information been shared with multiple social media groups?

For this assignment I did not share content with social media groups because I did not want to inundate the class Facebook page or my Twitter account in such a short amount of time. However, Scoopit gives the option of sharing content on social media. In the future I will do this as I will be posting over a longer period of time rather than a day’s span. 

16. Has the curated information sparked new conversations or ideas for readers? 

No one has yet to comment, but I believe it will lead to great discussion. 

17. Are there filter bubbles affecting the information I’m finding?

No, content was purposefully and carefully collected. 

18.  Have I taken the time to search unfiltered content? (with customizations turned off in Google for example)

Yes, I used multiple search words and different Boolean operators to find the most appropriate and credible content.