The 21st Century Curator

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Via Scoop.it – teaching with technology

“How do the skills of a curator apply in an organizational context? More than ever before, as we know. In globally distributed and networked organizations engaged in doing complex work, where exception handling is likely to be the norm, it is crucial for information flow to be transparent and to have folks who can spot the patterns, connect the dots and provide that key insight which keep an organization on the cutting edge. They may or may not be officially conferred the title of curators. But the need is irrefutable. Probably the biggest challenge facing organizations today is not the lack of data creation, but the lack of someone who can connect all the floating dots—inside and outside the organization—that lead to meaningful decisions. While some aspects can be automated—using analytics—it still requires a human curator to recognize patterns and present the output. Who are likely to be playing the role of key curators in an organization? Most likely to be the community managers! With organizations going the social business route and investing in a social platform, community managers will soon become an essential role. And community managers are the best placed to play the role of curators as well. One insight I gleaned from this post by Bertrand Duperrin: Are curators the missing thing in enterprise 2.0 approaches? Curators are focused on information flows without thinking they’re leading or managing any community. From which I draw the inference that curators need not be community managers, but community managers should ideally have curation skills or work closely with curators to build a successful community. As Clay Shirky said here: Curation comes up when search stops working…[and] when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.”  
Via idreflections.blogspot.com

Keeping it all together

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The thing that I have learnt about moving is that not only do you reorganise your files, folders and books, but you also take a fresh look at your online presence because you are now doing things slightly differently. What I have found is that this helps me to redefine the criteria for good online programs. I have decided that I really need something that helps me to simplify how I do things, not make things more difficult. I want a blog where I can post documents and files for students to use. This was not possible so I had to search for a way around it. I decided on Sribd as I mentioned earlier. Then I decided that I wanted a homepage that helped me to stay organised, I decided on Page Flakes as I can have my Facebook, Twitter, post it notes, calendar, news feeds and music updated by the minute.

The process has allowed me to take stock and realise what is important for the current situation I am in. This is useful for our students as they can do the same while they are trying to organise themselves for learning. They could keep their notes on an online storage page  or cloud computing site and share them with their peers if they wished. They can update their resources on Diigo or Delicious and again, share them. Organisation is one of they key skills necessary for students (and teachers) and we can help them to learn this skill by using good online tools.