3 Free Cool Tools to Curate Content

Why Curate?

Content curation is a great way to find, organize and share useful knowledge efficiently. There are many free digital tools available to help manage web content in flexible ways allowing us to quickly share resources that are accessible online. Use of curation tools is social and will connect us to the ideas of others and help build our professional learning networks. Here are three efficient and effective content curation tools that can help educators manage web content and embrace technology.

eduClipper – Clip anything. Share everything.

Create visual clipboards of related content with this new tool designed just for education.
eduClipper is a free and user friendly tool for curating content that resembles Pinterest. This tool allows teachers and students to create visual clipboards of related content with the click of a button. Clip images, links, articles videos and lesson plans and pin them to your own private or public clipboard. Share clipped content via popular social media sites such as Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. Preview and re-clip the curated content of others from the home screen. eduClipper is teacher friendly and student safe, which makes it a very good choice for teachers who are hesitant to use mainstream social bookmarking tools. It is an appealing and user friendly tool for helping teachers and students collect, share and organize content visually.
Still in alpha, you can request an account when visiting the eduClipper website and expect to receive access to the system in 24-48 hours. Stay tuned to eduClipper for some exciting features that are in the works including embeddable clipboards, iOS and Android apps, searchable content aligned to Common Core and ISTE NETS and a robust teacher dashboard with access to feature controls of nested student accounts.Try eduClipper at educlipper.net

Scoop.It – Share ideas that matter.

Easily publish gorgeous magazines of related content with this visual and user friendly digital tool. Scoop.it’s popularity and one click connection to social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest  make it a tool that helps spread ideas quickly across the web. Feed keywords into the tool and it will find and suggest relevant content for you to scoop. Follow topics of others with similar interests and re-scoop their content with the click of a button. View a frequently updated collection of scoops from topics you follow upon login and easily re-scoop them. An added bonus that sets Scoop.it apart from other content curation tools is a function that  allows curators to upload their own images for display on the magazine, which eliminates the frustration of trying to curate content that doesn’t have a usable image on the page. Try Scoop.it at www.scoop.it

Mentor Mob  – Learn what you want. Teach what you love.

Create, share and collaborate on digital playlists of related content with this free and user friendly digital tool. MentorMob is an efficient and effective tool for curating content and organizing it into learning playlists. The playlists are displayed in a step-by-step format that allows users to interact with live web content right on the page, keeping students on track without getting lost in a stream of open tabs and new pages. As users progress through a playlist at their own pace, MentorMob keeps track of completed steps. Flexibility to move within a playlist is provided by a preview that is always accessible on the side of the screen and allows users to jump to different steps as needed, providing opportunities for relearning and challenge.  Privacy settings allow playlists to be private or public and a unique feature allows creators to collaborate on playlists if desired. With a quickly growing community of users and a big focus on academic playlists organized by content area, MentorMob users can find playlists on a variety of topics that are ready for use. Try MentorMob at www.mentormob.com.

Uses in Education

  • Create packages of content for student research, inquiry and project-based learning that includes multimedia resources and text written at a variety of reading levels to meet students’ diverse learning needs.
  • Create and publish displays of student work.
  • Create a collection of resources for professional development and continued learning.

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8 Comments

Janet Barnstable
8/16/2012

Great tips, Susan. Your writing is clear and to the point, which is a great boon for busy teachers looking for just the right tools.

Replies

SusanOxnevad
8/16/2012

Thank you, Janet. I use these tools all the time and hope busy teachers will find them to be useful.

Cris Guenter
8/16/2012

These look good. How do any or all the address copyright and Creative Commons--use and citing of items?

SusanOxnevad
8/17/2012

That's a good question, Cris. Each of these companies publish terms of use that specifically address copyright on their websites. Users are asked to read and agree to the terms before signing up for an account.

prithviinspire
8/17/2012

Thanks a lot for your tips. I found it very useful and the explanation of the tools are comprehensive. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge.

SusanOxnevad
8/18/2012

I'm very glad you found the tips and tools to be useful.

Vicki Tweedale
8/20/2012

Many thanks, I'm going to try these sites, I think curation is one of the useful tools for promoting teacher librarians.

Ally Greer
8/20/2012

Hi Susan,
This is a great article filled with great tips.
As a member of the Scoop.it team, I'd like to thank you for the mention! We appreciate you sharing the love for Scoop.it, and are glad that we can provide some great features to our users :-)
I'd love to talk more about curation or Scoop.it if you'd ever like to!
Ally

Susan Oxnevad
8/21/2012

Hi Ally,
I'm glad you liked the article!

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