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/