Thing 5: Curation
Category 1: Social Bookmarking
I’ve been an avid user of delicious for quite some time; I use it to bookmark school and personal sites. I do have the seniors set up their own delicious accounts during their major research project to save useful links on their topic. I was introduced to delicious first, so I’ve just stuck with it. I just recently started exploring the use of the stacks feature with my school delicious account to build a stack of American Literature resources for my eleventh graders. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to finish it! Yikes! At any rate I think it has some real possibilities
Category 2: Curation
I love Pinterest! My introduction to this tool was for personal use. A friend’s daughter was finding the best craft ideas on it. At first, I was a Pinterest stalker! I was using it to find craft ideas and home decorating ideas. Finally I got myself an “invite.” I love the visual aspect of this tool!! I can spend (or waste) a ton of time clicking around people’s pins! To be honest I didn’t even visualize this tool as professional resource, but I love what librarians are doing with it. I think the visual layout of Pinterest will appeal to students to use as a resource tool.
Category 3: Content Aggregators
Flipboard: I put this on both my iPhone and iPad, so it allows me to read the blogs I subscribe to via Google Reader in a magazine format. This makes it very easy on the eyes. I follow all these professional blogs, but don’t always have the time to read them. With flipboard on my iPhone, while waiting , I can quickly read the headlines of the blogs. This is a timesaver, because then I can go back and read the blogs I’m interested in.