This is not a distant past when students only had three sources of information:
- Textbooks
- Library
- Instructors
For instructors, finding and compiling topic relevant content for students was definitely a challenge. But now, when we think of collecting information about a topic, the first thing that comes to mind is the great internet.
While the internet is a vast pool of all types of information, it is also a huge platform. It is not always easy to search or find the relevant information, without spending hours in refining the search results. Indeed, this is one of the best times in terms of availability of information.
The Internet is giving us a treasure trove of every kind of educational information within a matter of a click. People are now having access to a depth and breadth of knowledge that was unimaginable in the earlier age. This is transforming the world of education deeply and remarkably – even at a much faster rate than you realize!
The point here is not just to emphasize on the feasibility of online learning but how this knowledge and information is being generated and presented to students. Thus effective content curation holds great importance to develop a successful learning course. It is a tough job for instructors as it is directly associated with achieving the learning objectives.
To help you with this, in this post, we will look at the top content curation tools for education. These tools are great to make use of amazing digital content pieces in developing your course outline. After all, it is highly important for educators to keep an organized process of storing, curating and sharing of information.
But before we dig deeper into top content curation tools, the question is:
What factors do you need to consider before curating content for education?
There are a few key factors that help in curating content successfully. While there can be plenty of ways to curate content, streamline the process and influence the audience, some of the proven practices are mentioned below;
- Know your audience
- Curate only authentic, relevant and high-quality content
- Be consistent and keep a check for updates
- Keep it simple, comprehensive and relatable
All of these factors will help students in contextualizing the information. It will help them connect and you can also ask them to contribute to the content.
Let us now have a look at the highly effective content curation tools for education to manage and to present your educational resources.
Top Content Curation Tools for Education
Here are 7 of the best content curation tools to help you find the best content for education:
- eLearning Tags
- LiveBinders
- Scoop It
- CurationSoft
- EduClipper
- Evernote
- Diigo
eLearning Tags
This platform is a hub for teachers who are in search of the latest content or news to enhance their teaching material. With learning Tags you can easily and instantly discover, share, discuss and vote for interesting and effective content. Instructors can easily start with making an account that enables them to bookmark the required content to be for research and teaching later on.
eLearning Tags offer a great opportunity for users to easily discuss and share the interesting content. Plus, they can also vote for the content that they find highly compelling or interesting. You can easily find information here on a number of topics concerning online education including;
- Instructional design
- eLearning
- Social Learning
- Gamification
- mLearning
- MOOCs
The site offers a great layout that is readable and accessible. It is divided into different categories and popular topics that help you navigate easily and find the most relevant content. You can also use keywords to search for the relevant content. Not to mention, the site is absolutely free to use by anyone.
LiveBinders
LiveBinders is a unique platform to curate and presents the resources simply and quickly. It lets you take control of all the relevant information. You can view links just like book pages rather than URLs on any page. In the same binder, you can easily combine Word docs and uploaded PDFs with links.
The platform is great to save time as you can easily update information without the need for resending links. The documents are easily managed with no layout issues in different tabs or sub tabs. You can also edit LiveBinders at any place and anytime.
It lets you create a good impression as you share the content in a very presentable format. The content can be shared using laptop or Smartboard. All you need is to create an account and start finding the best content. You can also use the edit tool to retitle tabs or to start from a new binder.
LiveBinders also give you the comfort to collaborate with other people on your binders, regardless if you know them or they are from across the globe. Not to mention, many instructors create effective LiveBinders that act as an online library for a student looking for relevant material or even other instructors teaching the same subject.
Scoop It
Scoop It is famous for its great customization features with regards to utility, appearance, and layout. You can include any image freely and edit any curated item while keeping the necessary link back to content’s original source that comes built in. This means you can save a lot of efforts and time with Scoop It.
Furthermore, you get the latest news delivered to you which enable you to further share with your network or on your social network. With Scoop It, you can use both premium and free versions. The service style itself just like online magazines focused on niche content. The best part is that other people can also make suggestions in terms of content that should be added to your page.
Scoop It is the resource platform that lets you make the most of the available content opportunities. Get the most relevant content that matters while satisfying your need to provide a relatable and fresh perspective. With Scoop It, you are definite to find the material that best meets your pressing need. The platform is supported on all types of devices with multiple language support including Middle-East, Australia, India, Asia, Ireland, Japan, and others.
CurationSoft
It is a content curation platform that lets you curate content on a whole new level. It is one of the most easy-to-use platforms to find the relevant content to share with your students. It is a platform that is very user-friendly and even self-explanatory. It is fully functional and just like Scoop It, you also get two versions i.e. free as well as paid.
With the free version, you only get to use Google’s Blog search. It is one of the most popular and widely used platforms for content curation for education. The best feature of CurationSoft includes document management, rich text editor, template creation, search, indexing, and others. It is really easy to set up and regardless if you are a novice or tech-savvy, you can easily generate as well as curated content.
If you are new you can watch their video tutorial to make the most of it. If you want to present the content in an organized manner while keeping it relevant to the topic then this is the go-to platform.
EduClipper
EduClipper was founded with the very basic thought in mind that students and instructors should get the best way to share, explore and contribute content that would help in education.
It is a very time-saving platform where you can develop learners network. It is best known for its offered features that help in digital content curation. Since the platform is particularly designed for educators you can easily set up an account and instantly start to add content.
By using a handy button you can easily bookmark the relevant and important digital content you find during web browsing. One of the most popular features offered by EduClipper is that users can collaboratively work on the content curated from the web. They can organize the content using EduClipboards and share it with rest of the people.
This platform is best for people who share the same interest or course. That is exactly why EduClipper is considered the best content curation tool for educators. Instructors can easily establish virtual classes including assignments. Both students and instructors can exchange work easily while allowing timely and instant feedback.
This feedback can be in the form of an audio or video clip, a grade or in writing, a badge or other. Moreover, students can also display their best work using personal portfolios.
Evernote
You must've heard of Evernote if you have been searching or creating content. It is a great platform to curate content, search content and brings all of your ideas on a single platform. It lets you act upon and remember projects, ideas, and experiences on all digital devices.
With Evernote, it is quite easy to collect information from any location and by using different devices which you find most convenient. The information you collect can easily search without the limitation of time and place. If you are looking for some specific feature then Evernote’s search feature lets you pull up notes using certain keywords or even handwritten text.
If you want to share your ideas and thoughts with one person or a group of student, you can easily do it using this tool. When it comes down to curating content for a classroom setup, an instructor gets a plethora of options. It is free to use and you can access it on every type of digital device.
While many people think that Evernote is just about taking notes, it is a lot more than this. It is an information all-in-one location.
Diigo
If you are an educator then Diigo is another best platform to curate content. Here you can easily tag and save resources searched on the web with easy accessibility. You can instantly highlight sites of your interest and rediscover the relevant content conveniently.
Just like a few content curation tools discussed above, you can easily share the content and create groups.
It lets you build a content library in the cloud with pages, links, pictures, notes etc. This means that you can never lose the curated content and it can be accessed from anywhere. Not to mention, the sticky notes, digital highlights, and screenshots you add while searching the web instantly and automatically add to your content library.
The platform allows you to organize the collected information as much as you like. It is a powerful platform with great searching capabilities. You can save and annotate any sort of information with a click. You can easily find the content later on. It provides unsurpassed content organization capabilities, with both lists and tagging to meet different needs.
You can build a group knowledge repository for your class so that every student can easily access, search and browse the curated content. Better yet, the group can interact effectively with on-page annotations. How about if all of your students are reading the same article while discussing and commenting right on that page?
Content Curation is about Adding Value
Since the eLearning industry has established and transformed so well in the past few years, content curation is inevitable. It is also important to understand that content curation is not just about accumulating or filtering content; it is about adding value by means of analysis and context.
It is about sorting content from the web and presenting it in an organized and meaningful way. Thus, content curation involves steps like examining, collecting, sorting, arranging as well as allocating content. In other words, it is not about developing completely new content.
For an instructor to be good at adapting content curation, they must;
- Identify content that would facilitate the learning goal
- Choose the strategy and content presentation approach that would best fit the desired outcomes
- Integrate them purposefully and appropriately to fully meet learners’ requirements.
Since the skill of content curation is not inborn, it is developed and takes a good amount of time, practice, patience, hard work and commitment to fully excel. So choose any of the best content curation tools discussed above and enhance your skills even more!
