Content Curation Tools & Service: MyCurrator

Week 8

I feel as though I’ve walked into a supermarket this week and am looking at cereal shelves lined with so many choices, but in reality it’s not actually a supermarket. Rather, it is a page with an assortment of content curation tools and services. All of which are very appealing; all of which seem to call out to me, the potential user, about its usefulness. The line up; Curated.by, Curchew, Flipboard, Google Currents, Keepstream, MyCurator, Paper.li, Pearltrees, Pluggio, Scoopt.it, Squrl, Storify, Summify, Themeefy, and Zite. Having infinity toward WordPress, MyCurator is the one that captures my curiosity. And this is where I began my exploration of content curation tools and services.

Powerful tools, I get it! I especially got it with MyCurator’s training videos that took me through a step-by-step narrated experience to train me on how to curate articles. MyCurator allows the user to import content via RSS. The question that I raised is what are the pluses and minuses of using this content curation tool and services?

The Pluses:

As a user, I am able

*  to import content quickly

*  to get images automatically from each post

*  to set post status as a draft or pending review is easier

*  to assign each feed to specific categories

*  to get a complete post- through editing I was able to keep what I needed and to delete that which I did not need.

* to manually process each feed in lieu of the feed occurring automatically. The process lessens the potential frustration and a feeling of being overwhelmed by so many feeds.

The Minuses:

* Unnecessary deleting of undesirable posts and images. Even though it’s possible to manually control feeds, having to continually delete unsolicited posts can be a bit much.

  *Issues that can be challenging- videos can be difficult to import and/or embed.

After perusing the site and examining the pros and cons, I think to myself, is MyCurator a beneficial curation tool?  I believe it is. I believe, even in the face of minuses, it has the potential to do much of what I need on WordPress.  Now that’s a plus!

Resources

http://c4lpt.co.uk/directory-of-learning-performance-tools/content-curation-tools-and-services/

Reflections on the productive use of Twitter

Week 7

In this week’s assigned reading, Attention, and other 21st-century social media literacies, Rheingold made three salient points.

The first point made is that Twitter requires knowledge of your public. What I learned from this is that for Twitter to be effective as a learning environment, an instructor would need to understand the way in which a student perceives its usefulness and then harness that perception into a valid learning experience. Hence “knowledge of your public.”

A second point of the productive use of Twitter, and social media in general, is how your participation meets their needs.

My understanding of this is that there is something to be learned about how to participate in a way that's valuable to others as well as to myself. For example, if I want ab initio pilots, whose first language is not English to learn radio communication, I would post on Twitter an image of relevant aircraft followed by a LiveATC audio stream of the control tower communicating to the pilot in command. I tweeted this recently on Twitter when President Obama flew in Marine One to the Santa Monica airport. Why did I do this? I did this because I knew that my participation in using an image of Marine One and the LiveATC audio stream would meet the needs/interests of my constituents.

The third point to takeaway is what I got in return for having tweeted a relevant news piece. The return on my effort was an overwhelming response to something that was useful and a valid learning experience for my audience. 

In short, knowing my audience, how my participation meets their needs, and the return on investing in what’s relevant to my constituency makes Twitter and social media an effective learning environment.

Tweet on! 

Resources

Rheingold, H. (2010). Attention, and other 21st-century social media literacies. EDUCAUSE Review, 45(5), pp. 14–24. Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/attention-and-other-21st-century-social-media-literacies

What is that Ning thing all about?

Week 6

Ellen Hoffman in Social Media and Learning Environments: Shifting Perspectives on the Locus of Control states that,  “the growth of large-scale, freely available Web 2.0 social media applications offered a range of options. As with any design vision, none met every criterion for the ideal discussion environment. Ning, which was being used in other contexts outside of courses by some faculty in the education school, emerged as the best choice (Hoffman, 2009).”

What is the Ning thing and why was it considered the “best choice”? Ning claims, unlike other social platforms, that you and your fans can connect, converse, create content together in a place that’s truly yours. You decide how it looks and works. Not only does Ning have an easy-to-use threaded discussion Forum tool, it also has social tools such as profiles, “friending,” comment entry, blogging, areas to share images and video, and more (EducauseConnect, 2008).

In 2009, it was perceived the best choice because as Hoffman points out, “it allowed an instructor the ability to create a private Ning space to limit membership to class members and restrict outsiders from viewing, something considered desirable as students explore new concepts.” (Hoffman, 2009).

While innovative for its time, and even with the new Ning 3.0,  I believe the idea of creating your own social network has been surpassed and supplanted by Facebook and/or Google + and others, which has similar features and capabilities. The question I raise, why should I use Ning if my users are already on Facebook and are able to see feeds there? Hence, the Ning thing might have created a big stir, but now it seems to have become a Ning thing of the past that is losing ground in the competitive eras of web 2.0.

Your thoughts?

References 
Hoffman, E. S. (2009). Social media and learning environments: Shifting perspectives on the

                 locus of control.Education, 15(2), 23-38. Retrieved from 

                 http://ineducation.couros.ca/index.php/ineducation/article/view/54/533