Cloud Bookmarking and Content Curation - Week 4

Leclerc, M. (CC) 2013

This weekly exploration of tools has me torn between one that I really see a use and practicality for and one which I find has failed to grab me.   Let's get more in depth about both of them.

Cloud bookmarking is a great way to save your favorite bookmarks where you can access them anywhere regardless of which device you are using.  Your bookmarks are no longer trapped locally on your favorite browser.  I picked Delicious to fulfill this duty as it allows to add bookmarks to the cloud fairly easily from my favorite computer browser and has a pleasant interface. 

What I find most appealing so far with my use of cloud bookmarking is that when you add a bookmark it tells you how many others have bookmarked the same link before.  You can add personalized comments to your bookmarks and add tags to group them together or access them faster once you have a very extensive library.  When the bookmark is common the site suggests tags to you based on what others have used in the past.  These tags also allow you to search other bookmarks that have been tagged using key words like; education, learning, science etc. 

Now as it relates to your PLE, which we have discussed in an earlier post, cloud bookmarking is a really good asset.  Most of the tools in your PLE will be Web 2.0 tools which means they will be part of your cloud bookmarks and therefore available anywhere.  With the amount of tools at your disposition and with the variety of tools you may have as a part of your arsenal, it would be hard to remember them all, especially those you use on a less frequent basis so go ahead and "cloudify" them so they are always just a few clicks away and while you're at it, do a quick search to see what the rest of the world is bookmarking.  Great sources of information are hard to find so once you've clicked your way to one you like it's really important to save it for future use and what better way to expand on that then by searching what others are bookmarking for the same uses?

On the other hand, I'm really struggling to see as great a benefit from curating content.  I can clearly see why this is being used in business and marketing tool but struggle to find a way to use it that would validate the time spent curating.  It seems to be a great tool for sharing and involving social media in a way that cloud bookmarking doesn't.  I can see where this would be beneficial if my digital footprint was already well established but as it is in its infancy I don't yet feel like I should be focusing on broadcasting content.  Then again this was one of my biggest challenge when after realizing that this is an area in which my PLE lacks muscle.  As I transition from a spectator to a creator on the internet, I can see how curating content would increase in relevance but in the mean time I'm tentatively dipping my big toe in so to speak in the hope that I'll warm up to the ideal. 

Overall I I would file these tools under Accessing information/Spectator banner of my PLE even if curating shows signs of creation, all that is really happening here is content repackaging and propagating.

I would like to finish this post by sharing an exciting news bit that pertains to the future of technology in education.  If you are as big a fan of using new technology in education as I am then you will be glad to hear that Google is invested in rivaling Apple in the educational tech space.  This will certainly lead to great innovations that learners will benefit from as a result, find out more here.

Please share your comments as to why you've invest in curating content, I'd like to hear what you have to say.

Thanks and happy leaning.

Mathieu Leclerc