The Science of Curating


“A curator is an information chemist. He or she mixes atoms together in a way to build an info-molecule. Then adds value to that molecule.” - Robert Scoble
Image by Wikimedia Creative Commons 
This week we were tasked with researching the art of curation for educational purposes and then develop a tool to assess the quality and value of an education-related curated topic. Prior to this assignment, I didn’t really think about educators being curators or how I could develop a curation project for students. Robert Scoble’s above analogy of curation and chemistry describes a curator as an information chemist, where an individual takes data or
pieces of information and creates a new “molecule” or something that has its own characteristics or message. This really resonated with me as a science teacher, taking different pieces of data that each has their own characteristics (similar to individual elements having their unique physical and chemical properties) and putting them together to form a new “info-molecule” that has its own unique, new meaning.

Through my research, I found that curating a topic is much more than just aggregating or collecting and sharing resources which is something that most of us already do. Curation is a methodical way of collecting particular resources on a topic, putting them into context, and sharing with an audience to foster a deeper understanding and critical thinking. Unlike aggregation, with curation, there is much more time spent researching and evaluating resources for their relevancy, accuracy, engagement, and quality. Only the best resources and artifacts are selectively chosen to be shared. Besides filtering and scrutinizing the validity and relevancy of each resource, the curator also contextualizes the information for the audience- adding annotations or perspective. When curating a collection, resources should be taken from a variety of sources and media in order to offer unique perspectives on the specific focus.
After my research, I created a checklist for successful topic curation for my own individual use or to share with students for them to use when working on a curation project of their own. Checklist for Quality Curation


References
Scoble, R. (2010, March 27).  The seven needs of real-time curators.  Retrieved from 
https://scobleizer.blog/2010/03/27/the-seven-needs-of-real-time-curat

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