Thing 1: Curation Tools

I looove Pinterest!!! The only problem is, it sucks the life out of me or I should say sucks the time out of my day.  I started using Pinterest, in my personal life, to find ideas for my daughter’s wedding.  This was back when you had to be “invited” to join.  I found wedding ideas and much much more.  That’s where the time element comes into play.  It takes time to explore and then double check (or follow the trail back to the original website) to find the how to and/or more information.  I’ve spent countless hours exploring, but it's paid off with  some excellent ideas!  It wasn’t until a year or so into using Pinterest that I was introduced to the many wonderful ways libraries were using it to curate resources.  I follow a number of libraries to “steal ideas” for displays, lessons, new books and new authors, and more!  Love Pinterest for what it can offer me for my personal life and my professional life. I think both teachers and students will love the ease of using Pinterest, plus many are already familiar with it. 

 I just read Bridget’s post on pinterest and loved the way she used it to gather resources for a project. It got me thinking that Pinterest would be an excellent tool to migrate my pathfinders from a text based format to a visual one.  I could even have a student do the pinning and then just go back and edit the pins with my own comments. Below you can see I gave this a try with some of the resources  from my banned book pathfinder It would a great tool to use to build a visual display of text sets on a concept. At this point my school Pinterest is used mainly to gather professional ideas, Here’s a link to my school Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/ccsjrsrhigh/

Scoopit:  I’ve had a scoopit account for a while, with email notification.  The problem once again is time.  I see all these great resources, but I sometimes have a difficult time finding a chance to read them all.  The great thing is they are all in one spot, so I can go back and check the resources out at a later date.

Edshelf:  I figured I should check out one tool that was new to me, so I explored Edshelf.  This tool is extremely easy to use and a great way to organize all my other tools. I then have a nice visual to embed on my website.  I created a collection for the AASL Best Websites for Teaching & Learning 2013, but wasn’t able to find some of the tools.  The great thing about Edshelf you can “add a tool.”  I really like the organized visual of each collection. Another feature I loved was the ability to print a list of your tools with a QR code for the site. I’m still enamored with the QR code technology! My one critique of Edshelf is that I can’t organize my tools by subcategory.  For the AASL I would I like to break it down further by the type of tool.  I think it’s a great space for teachers and students to organize, present, and share information!