Blog #2- Content Curation

I have to admit that before reading Teaching with Content Curation, the term curation was not familiar to me.  Content curation is the process of researching and gathering information about a specific subject on the web, and putting it in a central location. This benefits the student by eliminating the time necessary to compile the information on their own. 

I believe that it would benefit the educator as well.   By gathering the information personally they can tailor it to the diverse and specific needs of their students.   Often, this might meet their needs better than a textbook.  In this article, the educator replaced the textbook because she saw that her students were having problems with certain subjects and this could help her zone in on what they needed. 

Because differentiation is important, I plan to use something like Livebinders in my classroom to help me meet the diverse needs of my students.  Livebinders would be a great resource for assessing each child’s needs and creating lessons to meet them.  For example, if I knew that one of my students was having problems differentiating between a “b” and a “d”, I could gather the materials in a Livebinder to assist them. 

I also plan to use to use various interactive content forms such as those used in my SMART Notebook lesson.  In Kindergarten it is common to use sorting for learning shapes, colors, number and letters.  As mentioned in the Rosetta Stone Demo, learning happens more easily when there is a visual aid attached to the concept for easier recall.

In the 2013K-12 Horizon Report, it was stated that it is more common now for students to bring their own mobile electronic devices to the classrooms.  I believe that it would benefit the school and the student greatly to incorporate these devices for the purposes of researching, playing educational games, etc., to promote learning. 

In conclusion, I believe that content curation will be a valuable asset to me in my classroom in the future.