Conversation 4: Pillar Two – Curation
Chapter 3: Pillar Two – Curation
The focus of Chapter 3 is the second pillar: Curriculum, which Gayle Allen argues will shift to Curation. According to Allen, the transition from Curriculum to Curation requires us to embrace the abundance of information that surrounds us and help students use tools to organize, store, and tag information for use in learning. Scanning, Sense Making, and Sharing are highlighted as the 3Ss of great curation.
Use the comment tool at the bottom of this post to discuss the following questions. Please label your posts as Q1 for answers to question 1, etc.
- What effect has the Carnegie Unit had on the U.S. education system?
- Provide examples of things that you currently curate for professional learning? What is the impact of this process on your learning experience?
- What are the benefits of allowing students to curate resources for learning?
- How can you implement this next year?
Feel free to reply to the comments of other learners.
FYI. Names are posted, and the website is visible. Please focus on positive discussion and sharing. Happy reading!
1. I actually curate resources for professional learning more than I realized. If I had to pick one example it would be through a Pinterest board for things I want to learn or ideas for lessons. I locate lesson ideas or projects and then save them all in one resource that is easily accessible. The impact that this has on my learning experience is that it relieves some of the stress for me. I like knowing that I have immediate access to help if I’m struggling to remember what to do. Collaborating with others through sharing ideas and projects has taught me to think beyond my normal limits. It really creates a desire to push beyond what is required and into many more opportunities to grow as an educator.
3. Allowing students to curate resources benefits students the most because it helps them to tailor there learning experience to what works for them. They decide what is relevant to them once they find resources that align with their learning style. Sharing those ideas with others also gives them different perspectives to consider.
4. We actually tried curating some this past year, but after reading this chapter I am thinking of many ways that I could implement this in My classroom. I can see this used in our manufacturing project. Students chose a product to create. Since each partner group gets to choose the product they are designing there is no garuntee that I know how to help them. They can research resources to help them come up with a plan and techniques to design and manufacture their product. They can then make their own how to video to share with others.
What effect has the Carnegie Unit had on the U.S. education system?
I believe the Carnegie Unit has gotten the U.S. education system into a very fixed mindset. It has done the same thing over and over for years and gotten teachers and students into a routine that is not effective. I believe it also has scared some educators into not wanting to branch out and try new things because of this mindset that things have to be done in a certain order, at a certain time, in a specific way.
Provide examples of things that you currently curate for professional learning? What is the impact of this process on your learning experience?
Participating in things such as Twitter chats, TEDtalks, and Pinterest are ways that I consistently curate. I believe that looking at what others have done and being able to tweak that to fit our classroom is very beneficial. With Twitter chats and TEDtalks, it is good to be able to talk with other educators about similar things that are going on in your classrooms as well. Curation gives us the opportunity to bounce ideas off of others that we may not normally get the chance to do so.
What are the benefits of allowing students to curate resources for learning?
The benefits of allowing students to curate for learning are endless. Not only does it begin to give students more ownership of their learning, but it also allows them to see what others are doing as well. Curation of resources also gives students the opportunity to learn good problem solving skills. They must be able to go in and make sense of a lot of information and decide how that information is going to be useful to them. This is a skill that will travel with them far beyond the classroom and is going to be a highly sought after skill in the workplace.
How can you implement this next year?
I believe one way I can implement this curation of resources by starting in the classroom. Having students share things to a shared Google Drive that is open for collaboration by other students in the class would give my students the opportunity to share their information with those in the class and work to build off of it.
Chapter 3
Q1 What effect has the Carnegie Unit had on the U.S. education system? I had never heard of the Carnegie Unit until reading this chapter. However, it appears to me that learning has been constrained to set criteria. It dictates how much time students should spend on learning a particular topic. I can tell you from personal experience that throughout basics in college, I learned what needed to be learned and moved on. There was never any autonomy in my own learning. I was trying to earn the 3 credit hours so that I could start working on my Bachelor’s Degree. In this type of setting, learners are not encouraged to take risk and design their own learning – its robotic.
Q2 Provide examples of things that you currently curate for professional learning? What is the impact of this process on your learning experience? Pinterest has been a favorite of mine to curate both personal and professional interest. I love that I can save articles, ideas for projects, etc. that relate to me. I also love that Pinterest sends me notifications for pins that might be of interest to me based on other pins I have saved. Educators love Pinterest! I participate on Twitter and follow leaders in education. I also follow blogs, podcasts, etc. of teachers who serve in the same role as me. This is a terrific way to share ideas and ask questions from other educators. What impact has it had? It has made learning spontaneous and I can immediately locate resources that interest me. We can learn so much in a short amount of time.
Q3 What are the benefits of allowing students to curate resources for learning? I think Bulb is going to be terrific for our students in RCISD. I think it will be easier for students in upper grades because students will have more ownership of developing the different pieces. Students in primary grades are going to need more support. Scanning will allows students to determine the reliability of an online resource. Sense Making affords students the opportunity to determine what information is relevant to their learning. They may come across many resources but determine that only a few meet their needs. We used to have a stack of library books with sticky notes stuck in between pages and we would have to cart that information around in our backpacks. Students are now able to categorize and save information that is pertinent to their learning. Sharing allows students to use social media to share their learning with teachers, peers, and/or family. Sharing information online allows students to receive instant feedback. They can also expand their learning by what others send them. There are endless possibilities for how students can curate resources for learning. Students in 1st grade would be able to search for pictures that begin with an alphabet letter and save them in a file. Scanning, Sense Making, and Sharing can be adapted for all age levels.
Q4 How can you implement this next year? I’d love for my ESL students to be able to create a digital portfolio of their learning throughout the year. I would also like to compile their writing samples into a portfolio.
Q1 It effected educators by giving a baseline on how long or often they should teach a content area. I think of this as when we are told we need to teach English Language Arts and Math for a certain amount of minutes each day. We set our daily, weekly, and yearly schedule based on the amount of time a student needs to have these content areas. As well as we how our schedule for the school year goes, students and teachers need to be in school an allotted amount of time. This continues to effect educators on their contracted and how many days we need to work in order to get paid. It affects students because it breaks down the classes/courses they need in order to graduate. It is laid out and set before them that they receive them and meet a criteria in order to graduate. It provides an order and a sense of structure. Every child goes through these courses in education no matter what; they have to attend them in order to move on to the next level of courses. In a way it uniforms education.
Q2 This year as well as some of last year was able to curate the new reading curriculum. I have been scanning the new content to see how it will be best implemented into my classroom. Then of course after you evaluate it to see how it will work, it is broken into a blueprint. This helps me in making sense of what it all encompasses to better teach it to my students. Now that I have looked at my piece of it, it is now shared with colleagues as well as with my students. Curating effects the way I teach because for one you need to make sure the sources you are giving your students are accurate. Things are constantly changing, so I always overview the information before I share it with anyone. It also works when you find something to share with your team. You want to review the skills that you will be teaching as well as make sure the activity will meet the standards in which you are teaching. After that we analyze it to see if it will fit the needs of our class/team. Then if it meets our criteria we share it with our class/team.
The impact this makes on my learning is it gives me a better understanding of what I am trying to accomplish, better myself so I can better my students. Curation is a sign of a good life long learner. As a teacher we should make sure what we share and learn is not only just to go through the motions but to really be engaged on new ideas or methods. Additionally it slows you down and allows you to process through the information. Using the steps of scanning, sense making, and sharing provides you with the opportunity in becoming an expert at a topic or area of study.
Q3 The benefits of allowing your students to use curating for their learning is just as I said above, allows them to have ownership of their own learning. They are taking an idea or topic and becoming an expert on it. I did apply this more in my upper grade teaching years. I gave students a topic and a rubric and told them to do all the research on it. They were the ones that found the sources, read through them, made it into their own words, and then shared with the class on the topic they researched. It was always enjoyable to see what they learned and thought was interesting. Last year, I did this as well through reading animal books and then making a poster about the animal they researched. It is a little harder when they are younger because they are still learning to read and know what is fact and what is falsified information. However in both cases I saw how this allowed students to feel more confident in an area and not relying on me for all the information. They certainly remembered what they learned more.
Q4 The way I would like to implement this next year in my classroom is allow more research projects, where students can utilize these skills. I think this would be also fun to try in math to see different ways student solve problems. I will be teaching first grade again and they are at the age where learning is fun and they love showing how they did something. Therefore, I believe with giving them more ownership now would be a good tool to provide them more independence and break them off of me. I mean, at the early ages they think the teacher knows everything. Therefore have more of a classroom set up where we are all learners and discovering how to be good curators. A good curator will allow students become strong individuals who are able to learn on their own therefore becoming lifelong learners.
1. What effect has the Carnegie Unit had on the U.S. education system?
The Carnegie Unit essentially dictates the layout of our school year/scope and sequence/course offerings/subject structuring—it theoretically dictates that how long a student should spend learning about a single subject over the course of hours/weeks in a year, as if learning is a confined activity, to be done continuously within the bounds of time limited courses in a specific setting.
In other words—it completely ignores learning as a continuous process that occurs organically, in and outside of the academic setting, in a multi-disciplinary, integrated way.
2. Provide examples of things that you currently curate for professional learning? What is the impact of this process on your learning experience?
I love TED Talks (TEDEd), participate regularly in Twitter edchats, dig regularly for content on Pinterest & on r/Education , and visit Education Week as one of my homepages. I so appreciate being continually exposed to new ideas, I regularly gather ideas and content onto my google drive (sorting/filtering/scanning and sense-making), and apply as much as possible as often as possible. I appreciate visual media (online print/photos/graphics/etc), because it means I can access the content during nap time or in the few minutes after my kids go to bed. It means that learning can be continuous, spontaneous and instantaneous whenever a new idea/question or concept pops into my head.
3. What are the benefits of allowing students to curate resources for learning?
Scanning builds innate capacity within students to think critically, evaluate resources, and respond quickly and flexibly—I see scanning as helping to build the kind of mental dexterity workers are going to need moving forward. Sense-making further reinforces the creation of this kind of mental dexterity, as well as creating critical thinking skills revolving around making the data/resources contextual and create/tell the story. I think of my husband, who works in data and revenue analysis—a tremendous portion of his day is spent scanning thousands of bits of information which he immediately has to select important pieces and make sense of them in order to address the question or specification he is working on. Furthermore, beyond being just an analyst, my husband’s job requires him to also share and give/receive/process and respond to feedback.
Teaching students how to do this sets them up for what the world has become, in every practical and real sense of the word. Beyond this, allowing them to curate gives them the kind of engagement that benefits the long term sustainability and retention of what they’re learning. It allows students to self-differentiate (thus removing some of this burden from sitting squarely on the teacher to determine individuation). It also helps to broaden the way that they see themselves as learners and in terms of their capabilities/confidence in owning their learning.
4. How can you implement this next year?
I really want students to have the opportunity to create a digital portfolio for their learning—ELAR has massive units, allowing students to hone in on specific chunks and create their own portfolio for the resources and components they select—I am really hoping to allow them autonomy in self-selecting the chunk(s) of learning on which they’d like to focus, while keeping it sufficiently narrow so as not to overwhelming them.