Technology and other considerations

So my idea was to curate websites. I read an interesting article on content curation that challenged teacher librarians to provide value-added curating rather than just collecting (White 2012).  To add value, a clear list of sorting objectives is required, I used the ones that I had outlined in my vision post (March 9, 2014).

I then looked at different ways to curate these resources, one of my PLN members suggested Jog the Web (2014). Before I started using this resource, I checked online to see what other resources are available for this task.  Well, I found out the list was endless (Ragan2013) and many tools seemed to be more for aggregation of personally selected information, for example of Twitter, newsfeeds, etc. rather than curation of content in a more traditional library sense.  Some, like Pearltrees, seemed to just collect the website link, visually, but not allow for commentary; or at least the examples I looked at.

So I started entering my data in my old standby Excel spreadsheet, and then I transferred it into Jog the Web.  It definitely was more time consuming to have 2 steps, but the advantage of the columns in Excel was it clearly allowed me to list my selection criteria (oral instructions, grade levels, content, cost, etc) and thus reminded me to evaluate each resource for all these features.  It also helped when I moved the information into Jog the Web, as I had clarified my summary format in my mind, and settled on recommended and not recommended.  I also had a clearer idea of the variety of websites and realized that sites which had only some features that I was looking for I did not need to recommend since there were many better websites.  Then I found out that Jog the Web has to create second pages after 20 items are entered, making the process more cumbersome. Also my limited bandwidth made the saving of information slow.  A good feature is that I could order my best choices at the top with the ordering tool on Job the Web

Next I tried Aaron’s suggestion of Delicious, to see if I could speed up the entry process.  And now I am back to tagging, which isn’t the kind of sorting I wanted, but I could definitely add a tag for recommended or not recommended.  My intention was to create a short list for my teachers to review and put selected ones on my school website.  I wanted the complete list so I knew if I had already rated the website.  However when I share my Delicious links I would have to tell the evaluating teachers that they need to sort the links by the recommended tag, a bit fussy when I am asking for help.  So on Delicious I just put the short list.  However, I must have been tired when trying to share Delicious as it appeared I could only share it with Delicious members.  So to actually send the project out for some feedback I sent it out with the easy to find hyperlink in Jog the Web version which has the preferred websites listed as the top 16.

So my challenge will be to get feedback, even if I had started earlier it wouldn’t be much different since my school was on a 2 week spring break.  I will wait a couple of days and if nothing comes I will share my recommended list with the class and have our school website designer add them all to our school website, which is sorted into primary/intermediate.  Thanks to Jane, I do have some valuable feedback. 

References:

Delicious. Retrieved April 2, 2014 from https://delicious.com/
Jog the web. March 31, 2014. http://www.jogtheweb.com/
Ragan. 2013. 15 top –notch content curation tools.  Retrieved March 31, 2014 from http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/15_topnotch_content_curation_tools_15378.aspx
White, Nancy. July 2012.   Understanding content curation.  Reviewed March 30, 2014 on http://d20innovation.d20blogs.org/2012/07/07/understanding-content-curation/