Content curators provide a customised, vetted selection of the best and most relevant resources on a very specific topic.

Beth Kanter, a social media author and blogger, provides this definition of curation in her blog Content Curation Primer:

“Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific theme. The work involves sifting, sorting, arranging, and publishing information. A content curator cherry picks the best content that is important and relevant to share with their community. It isn’t unlike what a museum curator does to produce an exhibition: They identify the theme, they provide the context, they decide which paintings to hang on the wall, how they should be annotated, and how they should be displayed for the public”.

If the notion of content curation is new to you, or if you want to brush up on your understanding of the concept, review the following references to learn more:

• Blog post about ‘Teacher As Curator’ by Ted Curran.

• This resource from Columbia University on the importance of selecting course content that recognises diversity and acknowledges barriers to inclusion.

• This video that answers the question What is Content Curation? (Centerline Digital, 2015):

• A graphic view of content curation:

Think about how you would define content curation, and how it might be important and/or useful for you and for your learners.

Examples of content curation tools include Pocket, Scoop.it and diigo. You can see more curation tools in the Ontario Extend Toolkit.

Each of these resources reveals that content curation probably aligns well with what we already do when designing and developing courses and/or activities to facilitate learning. Here, we’re simply reframing the process and identifying tools and strategies to assist us along the way.