Thoughts on Curation
When I think of the term "curation" I think of a 19th century museum curator whose job it is to sift through all sorts of odds and ends: old mummified animal parts, bits of ancient manuscripts, fossilized teeth or petrified wood, and medical oddities. I picture a cabinet of curiosities.
But I remember the first time I heard the word "curation" in the modern context. It was just prior to attending the first "Made in America" music festival in Philadelphia. The year was 2012, and as an avid Pearl Jam fan who has seen the band 15 times, I was in attendance for night two of two, for which Pearl Jam was headlining. In the weeks leading up to the show, I had heard that Jay-Z had curated the festival, and I remember thinking "What an odd way to describe this production". When I thought about it, the meaning was pretty obvious... Jay-Z had (supposedly) hand-selected all the acts based on his own personal taste, and this highly curated, elite group of performers was who I was about to see. (Of course, I just showed up for Pearl Jam, so most of the effect was lost on me.)
But since then, the word has kind of taken off once again. In the age of social media, when everyone can share their views and ideas and tastes with thousands of people in a single click, curation is back in fashion. In a way, it's not all that different from the cabinet of curiosities. It's just that everyone now has the means to assemble their own cabinet of curiosities in any form they want, and then share it with whomever happens to care. It's like making a literal mix-tape for a friend on a cassette tape with painstaking care, recording each track one by one, and assembling a perfect tracklist of songs that you didn't create, but that you really care about... songs that capture your own tastes and mood at the moment, but also with careful consideration of your friend(s) who you're sharing it with.
Take this a step further and you get to curation 2.0 (or 3.0 maybe?). This is what social media is all about: taking your own ideas and using them to build, or take part in, a larger community of like-minded (or maybe not so like-minded) individuals. When utilized to share in the joy of silly memes and funny cat videos, it's one thing, but put some thought and purpose into it, and you've got a serious 21st century tool on your hands.
When I think of the term "curation" I think of a 19th century museum curator whose job it is to sift through all sorts of odds and ends: old mummified animal parts, bits of ancient manuscripts, fossilized teeth or petrified wood, and medical oddities. I picture a cabinet of curiosities.
But I remember the first time I heard the word "curation" in the modern context. It was just prior to attending the first "Made in America" music festival in Philadelphia. The year was 2012, and as an avid Pearl Jam fan who has seen the band 15 times, I was in attendance for night two of two, for which Pearl Jam was headlining. In the weeks leading up to the show, I had heard that Jay-Z had curated the festival, and I remember thinking "What an odd way to describe this production". When I thought about it, the meaning was pretty obvious... Jay-Z had (supposedly) hand-selected all the acts based on his own personal taste, and this highly curated, elite group of performers was who I was about to see. (Of course, I just showed up for Pearl Jam, so most of the effect was lost on me.)
But since then, the word has kind of taken off once again. In the age of social media, when everyone can share their views and ideas and tastes with thousands of people in a single click, curation is back in fashion. In a way, it's not all that different from the cabinet of curiosities. It's just that everyone now has the means to assemble their own cabinet of curiosities in any form they want, and then share it with whomever happens to care. It's like making a literal mix-tape for a friend on a cassette tape with painstaking care, recording each track one by one, and assembling a perfect tracklist of songs that you didn't create, but that you really care about... songs that capture your own tastes and mood at the moment, but also with careful consideration of your friend(s) who you're sharing it with.
Take this a step further and you get to curation 2.0 (or 3.0 maybe?). This is what social media is all about: taking your own ideas and using them to build, or take part in, a larger community of like-minded (or maybe not so like-minded) individuals. When utilized to share in the joy of silly memes and funny cat videos, it's one thing, but put some thought and purpose into it, and you've got a serious 21st century tool on your hands.
Image credit: Curatti: https://curatti.com/11-content-curation-tools-make-life-easier/
The Age of the Smartphone
As I've stated in the past, I am a bit of a social media recluse. I'm certainly no stranger to technology. I like to think of myself as fairly tech-savvy, perhaps more so than the average teacher in many ways. I know how computers work. I use a computer every day of my life. I have multiple terabytes of pictures, musics, videos all backed up on multiple drives. I'm a child of the 90s internet revolution. However, I have been pretty averse over the years to establishing any sort of online network or social media presence. I am not on Facebook or Instagram and for God's sake definitely not Snapchat. I only recently set up a Twitter account just to play around with. If that doesn't convince you, then let this sink in: I don't have a smartphone. There, I said it.
And it's not because I'm so oblivious that I just can't get with the program. I have actively (and stubbornly) resisted. I know that it's a losing battle, and I know that it would be super convenient, and that if I got one, I would realize how great it is. But that's the point. The day I give in and get a smartphone (and I know it will happen inevitably) is the first day I will never be able to live without a smartphone. And so I'm trying to hold out as long as possible. I am 36 years old. My 9th grade students think I'm literally insane in some way. They think I'm deficient and have no idea what's going on.
But at this point, I don't really care. Am I missing out on a lot of things that have become part of the 21st century culture? Perhaps. Am I handicapped in some way because I can't instantly capture a picture of something awesome the moment it happens and share it with all my friends? Certainly. But am I all that concerned about it? Not really. So for the moment, I'm going to keep chugging along with my slidephone (that's right, slidephone, NOT a flip-phone--though I've got no problem with them).
Having said all this, and fully recognizing that I'm definitely biased (I'm pretty sure smartphones are not making our students--or people in general--actually smarter) I'm fully open to the idea that they are definitely useful. I get it. And I have my students use their phones in the classroom on a pretty regular basis because there are definitely things that teachers can now do in the classroom that would have previously been unthinkable. (For those of you who have used KAHOOT before: just imagine describing KAHOOT to the people of the year 2006... that's the year before the first iPhones hit the market.) So for my project, I'll be focusing on smartphones in the classroom, including pros and cons. The pros are numerous and obvious: instant access to the entire web and amazing multimedia at your fingertips. But the cons are pretty easily recognizable by most teachers: instant gratification, obsession and distraction, dependence and helplessness. Of course, these descriptors are the far ends of the spectrum, but we've all seen it... kids who can barely remember a life without their phone, who start to panic when they see their battery dipping below 10%; kids whose idea of research is asking Siri.
It's undeniable that smartphones are useful. But I guess the broader question I'd like to explore is, are they good for kids?
Curating Your Own Magazine
So back to curation... In exploring some of the options for organizing my project, I've looked at a bunch of curation tools from Diigo to Feedly to Pinterest to Flipboard, and several others in between. And of course, they all have their uses, but the question is for everyone is, which one is best for me? Some of them are built more for the classic (now-defunct) Google Reader fan, like Diigo and Feedly. They are more like updated versions of old-school news feeds, allowing users to subscribe to the kinds of content they want to read. And some are more graphically aesthetic, like Flipboard, which right away caught my attention.
Image credit: Bryan Kramer: http://www.bryankramer.com/10-ways-using-flipboard-consume-share-content/
But for me, Flipboard seemed too distracting for what I wanted to use it for. There were just so many things popping up on my screen, begging me to choose them to add to my own Flipboard. After playing around with it for a bit, it felt like it would just be another app that I would end up randomly clicking around and finding all sorts of stories to capture my attention for a while, but not the kind of tool that would really let me organize my own ideas around the content that I found relevant and important.
As stubborn as I have been when it comes to social media, I was a bit reluctant to go for the obvious choice, Pinterest. Based on my own preconceived notions, it always seemed like such a random and arbitrary way to share ideas. Any time you find something that looks nice, just "pin" it and there it is on your Pinterest board, forever consigned to internet oblivion. My wife has used Pinterest for years in just this way, randomly assembling her interests and passing whims onto her Pinterest board, seemingly just for the heck of it... just in case it ever came in handy.
But then, last year when we decided to completely redo our kitchen, I understood how powerful a tool Pinterest could be. When we met with the contractor to explain exactly what we wanted, I quickly realized that my wife had already planned the entire thing out over the last three years: cabinets, floors, faucets, appliances, back-splash, hardware, color-scheme... it was all there. In all her random clicking and pinning over the years, she had actually been carefully curating the perfect mix of items we wanted in our dream kitchen. That was when I realized the simplicity and utility of this tool for organizing ideas.
Image credit: Adobe: https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2013/11/congratulations-to-the-winner-of-the-adobe-creativity-in-education-pin-to-win-sweepstakes-education.html
Just Pin It
So for my EDIM 516 project, I've decided (for the time being) to use Pinterest as my own curation tool. I've just barely begun searching for the kinds of content that I'll be using to develop my project, but I must say that it has already opened a lot of doors in terms of inspiration and organization. Having that little "P" icon in my browser makes it so easy to add whatever I happen to find to my board. I've been doing some research to find some more scholarly studies on smartphones, their use in the classroom, and their effects on adolescent brains, but right now I'm just adding anything that captures my interest so that I can go back later and pore over my findings in more detail. To me, Pinterest starts out as just a stream of consciousness, but where it truly becomes a useful educational tool is when you go back and curate content, looking deeper, investigating other user's ideas, adding new content, deleting stuff that ends up being irrelevant... Pinning articles, pictures, and ideas is just the first step. It's the second or third pass that makes Pinterest a quality curation tool. And sorting through other educators' boards is a great way to find new ideas to inspire and stimulate one's own development as a teacher.
I am looking forward to finding some of the latest research into uses of smartphone technology as well as its effects on cognition and brain development. Hopefully, Pinterest will help me curate my findings into something that will be useful for myself as well as those who stumble upon my board.
For the time being, here is my own Pinterest board:
https://www.pinterest.com/joshuaucollins/edim-516/
Josh,
ReplyDeleteThanks for openly admitting your lack of progress with technology and using online applications like Facebook, Snapchat, and the like. I, like you, am fairly knowledgeable about the concepts of social media, but simply choose not to participate. When I leave work, I unplug and recharge. This means spending quality time with my family for about three or four solid hours. Then, it’s about time to go to bed and get ready for the next day. I cannot imagine losing hours on social media sites. It just is not for me during this season of life. I can appreciate the value the tools add. I just do not choose to use them at this point.
As I read your blog, an interesting thought came to mind in reference to curation. When I think of curation, I think about organizing artifacts in a purposeful way. However, as you describe with Pinterest, and I am finding with Flipboard, there is little organizing and placing items in a purposeful way. I click on the icon on my address bar to quickly add online resources to my Flipboard. I comment. I can start a few Flipboard with a different topic, but I cannot really curate the items in a purposeful way. This may be due to user error on my part or even lack of experience using the curation tool at this point. If anyone is willing to comment on their experience about curating within Flipboard, I would enjoy reading your thoughts.
Finally, I think you have selected an outstanding topic for this course. I wish I had thought of it! In terms of civil discourse, I am predicting you will have no trouble finding long and heated debates on this topic. In a previous EDIM course, I selected this topic. It was interesting, and I had no trouble finding content. While I had a different purpose for researching at the time, thinking back now, there was quite a bit of controversy about using or not using cell phones in the classroom. Congratulations and good luck on your journey collecting resources for the project. I look forward to seeing your final project.