Curation Tools for Education

image credits: Content Crossroads

What is Content Curation?

As instructors, we are all  information curators.  How do you collect and share currently relevant content with your students?  How do your students research and share information that they find with the rest of class? What tools do you use to manage or facilitate presentation of resources? Is it public? Can students access it at other times? In groups?

Modern web tools make it easy for both students and instructors to contribute online discoveries to class conversations.  Using free online content curation software, we can easily integrate new content in a variety of ways.

How can I use Content Curation in My Class?

Instructors are using online content curation tools in the classroom to:

• create group activities.
• organize and disseminate new content as a sort of digital handout to students in online and flipped classrooms.
• collect and share professional reading materials with students.
• foster discussion about current events.
• encourage students to become both content creators and curators.
• connect to experts outside class and to the world knowledge base.
• critique information available on the web.
• teach students to curate social media.
• help students gain credibility and exposure.
• keep track of online research efforts.
• create reading lists.
• help students gain access to the ‘collective intelligence’ of the Internet.

The following are some real-life examples of how content curation tools are being used in education. Pinterest is a pinboard-styled social photo sharing website. The service allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections linked out to sites of origin.

• English literature reading list - http://pinterest.com/steven_bickmore/texts-for-english-7542-fall-2011/
• Literary theory course - http://pinterest.com/steven_bickmore/literary-theory/
• Chemisty course study guide - http://pinterest.com/cnikky/chem-1411/

Storify is a way to tell stories using social media such as tweets, photos and videos. Users search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into stories. Users can re-order the elements and also add text to help give context to the readers.

• All about the tundra biome: http://storify.com/knewton/all-about-the-tundra
• Journalism: How to make a basic news video for web: http://storify.com/kellyfincham/how-to-make-a-basic-news-video-for-the-web 
• Syllabus constructed in Storify: http://storify.com/edwardboches/strategic-creative-development

Scoop.it allows users to create and share their own themed magazines designed around a given topic. 

• Bioinformatics course: http://www.scoop.it/t/bs2064-bioinformatics
• Plant biology teaching resources: http://www.scoop.it/t/plant-biology-teaching-resouces-higher-education
• IT professional skills course: http://www.scoop.it/t/ct231-it-professional-skills-module

Diigo is a soical bookmarking tool that allows users to collect bookmarks, annotate them and share to groups or lists.

• UW Madison chemistry course Diigo group
• Connectivism and connective knowledge course Diigo group
• Teaching computer programming group

Pearltrees is a content curation site that forms communities through sharing links through a visually striking interface. 

Get Started Using Content Curation Tools

Each service listed above offers a Bookmarklet to help you grab items of interest to add to your curation boards. A Bookmarklet allows you to quickly grab any content you find on the web and put it into your chosen collecting/sharing service. More information on bookmarklets at: Tech Support Guides.

In  iTeachU (sligthly abridged)

Learning New Vocabulary

Professor Word is a service that can help students learn new SAT and ACT vocabulary words. Professor Word operates as a browser bookmarklet in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. When you're reading a webpage click on the Professor Word bookmarklet to quickly identify SAT and ACT vocabulary words on that page. You can also use Professor Word to get definitions for any unfamiliar word on a webpage. To get a definition just highlight the word a small dialogue box containing the definition will appear.

Vocabulary Spelling City offers a database of more than 42,000 spelling words and sentences. The words and sentences can be customized for your students. This means that Vocabulary Spelling City supports US and UK spellings of words like "favorite" and "favourite," "color" and "colour." Teachers can use Vocabulary Spelling City to create custom lists of words for their students to practice spelling and to study the definitions of those words. To help students learn the proper pronunciation of the words on their practice lists, Vocabulary Spelling City provides clear, spoken recordings of every word. Students can play games, study words, and quiz themselves on the spellings of the words on their lists. Vocabulary Spelling City allows teachers to print activities for use in their classrooms when their students don't have access to computers. 

Wordia is a service that offers features videos of people (students and teachers) explaining and demonstrating the meaning of words. Wordia offers games based on the words in the word lists developed by Wordia staff and the lists developed by teachers and students. Students and teachers have the option to create their own word lists and create their own games based on those lists. 

Knoword is a fun and challenging game that tests your ability to match definitions to words. Knoword is played like this; you're presented with the first letter of a word, its part of speech, and the definition. You then have to fill in the correct spelling of the word. If you enter the correct word, you earn points. If you don't get it right, you lose points. You don't have to register to play Knoword, but you can register if you want. Registering for Knoword gives you the option to keep track of your game statistics. Registered users can also earn badges based on their performances.

Vocab Ahead offers online study rooms in which students can take practice vocabulary quizzes. The quizzes provide instant feedback on each question as well as summary information at the end of the quiz. While taking the quiz if a student is stuck on an item he or she can click on the hint tab. Vocab Ahead also offers video demonstrations of SAT vocabulary words. Teachers can create their own custom video playlists and place them into playlist widgets.

Source: Free Technology for Teachers

How e-Twinning impacts on learners

Tips for building a community on Facebook

image credits: Business2Community

Here are some authentic and practical ideas that can assist you in using Facebook to engage your students.
Facebook is extremely popular and leads off the list of most used social networks. For teachers who are looking to add a social media aspect to their classroom or even a single lesson, Facebook is nowadays one of the top choices. Engaging your audience by offering them dynamic content can help you to create an engaged community both in and out of the classroom.

Be Short and Precise

When using social media, being precise brings success. Short messages tend to be more useful and will generate more response compared to the longer ones. This is because longer messages tend to lack focus and readers may not find them interesting. A concise message can grab your audience’s attention more easily.The quicker you are able to get your point across, the more likely it is that you will generate a useful reaction from your community.

Question, Question, Question

You can easily spark a discussion by asking your community about their opinions, experiences, and suggestions. You can ask about a particular assignment, suggestions for future work (ie, of the following three books, which would you like to work on next) if your curriculum allows that, or give some sort of incentive for interacting on your page.

Include Media

Whether a still image, video, or music, sharing multimedia content with your community via Facebook is a great way to encourage them to become more engaged. Whether you’re sharing a cool video news story about something cool happening in the math world or a popular foreign language song to your language students, showing your community that all the information they’re learning in school exists in the ‘real world’, too can be an interesting way to get them more interested.

Upload At Appropriate Times

Unless it is part of a class assignment, most teachers don’t want their students spending class time twiddling around on Facebook.  Scheduling or posting content during the ‘after school’ hours is a great way to ‘re-engage’ your community when they might not otherwise be.

By Haword Roze @ Edudemic (slightly abridged)

Introducing Google Trends

Google Trends, a keyword search tool the search company recently revamped, is a great tool to find out what’s trending. You may already use Google’s Keyword Tool to compare and and finding keywords and their search volumes, but that data doesn’t change much month-to-month. On the other hand, Google Trends can help surface new ideas and topics every month and give you a understanding of what people are interested in at this moment.

Saint Valentine's @ Pine Tree

GR 330 editing powered by Photoscape

Saint Valentine's calling!

Get ready for St. Valentine's: it's only 13 days ahead! 
Celebrate this day at your school with your teachers of English and mates!
Visit our Facebook page, hit a like and post your message/ image/ video in English. Express your love and friendship to your beloved one(s) or to the school community. Have fun and enjoy the love season!

    On behalf of your

Teachers of English

GR 330

Glogging Conditional Sentences

World Wonders Project

The Google World Wonders Project is a platform which brings world heritage sites of the modern and ancient world online. Using Street View, 3D modeling and other Google technologies, Google has made these amazing sites accessible to everyone across the globe. With videos, photos and in-depth information, we can now explore the world wonders from our armchair just as if we were there. The World Wonders Project is a valuable resource for students and scholars who can now virtually discover some of the most famous sites on earth. The project offers an innovative way to teach history and geography to students of primary and secondary schools all over the world. There are several educational packages for your classroom use available for free download.

From the archaeological areas of Pompeii to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Google’s World Wonders Project aims to bring to life the wonders of the modern and ancient world.

By using our Street View technology, Google has a unique opportunity to make world heritage sites available to users across the globe. Street View is a hugely popular feature of Google Maps which is already available in dozens of countries. It allows users to virtually explore and navigate a neighborhood through panoramic street-level images. With advancements in camera technologies we can now go off the beaten track to photograph some of the most significant places in the world so that anyone, anywhere can explore them.

Street View has already proved a real hit for tourists and avid virtual explorers. 

The World Wonders Project also presents a valuable resource for students and scholars who can now virtually discover some of the most famous sites on earth. The project offers an innovative way to teach history and geography to students all over the world.

The Project is supported by a broad, connected suite of other Google technologies, bringing wonders of the world within reach of an unprecedented global audience. The project website also provides a window to 3D models, YouTube videos and photography of the famous heritage sites. Together with partners including UNESCO, the World Monuments Fund and Cyark, the World Wonders Project is preserving the world heritage sites for future generations. 

Source: World Wonders Project