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"What is digital curation? For those who visit museums or galleries, curators are those who are expert in a specific genre of exhibit, and who ensure that the displays are kept up to date, accurate and relevant to the viewing public. Curation is at the very heart of the success of any museum or art gallery. Digital curation is similar in many ways. It is becoming more important as content increases."

""Curation" may be one of the big buzzwords of 2011. As the amount of information accumulates thanks to the Web, it becomes increasingly important that we use tools to help us find information that's relevant and useful. The role of the curator has always been to help pull together and oversee collections of materials. But just as Web 2.0 has expanded the traditional role of publisher to almost anyone, the role of curator now too is changing. Anyone can "curate" online material, pulling together their own collections."

"As the web becomes more and more inundated with blogs, videos, tweets, status updates, news, articles, and countless other forms of content, "information overload" is something we all seem to suffer. It is becoming more difficult to weed through all the "stuff" out there and pluck out the best, most share-worthy tidbits of information, especially if your topic is niche. Let's face it, Google definitely has its shortcomings when it comes to content curation and the more it tries to cater to all audiences, the less useful it becomes. The demand for timely, relevant content that is specific to our unique interests and perspectives has given rise to a new generation of tools that aim to help individuals and companies curate content from the web and deliver it in a meaningful way. These new tools range from simple, application-specific types such as social media aggregators and discovery engines, to more complex, full-blown publishing solutions for organizations."

Just when you thought you were getting a handle on all this stuff eh?

"This great video produced by Vanessa Dennen (Florida State University) for the Social Media for Active Learning MOOC (#SMOOC2014), will give you a quick overview of social media curation. It's a great topic that all online instructors will love exploring."

YouTube can be a great place to find educational videos to use in your classroom. But YouTube isn't the only place where you can find good educational video content. These services will allow you to organize playlists from multiple video sharing services. Please note that if YouTube is blocked in your school, the only tool in this list that will provide a work around for you is Miro.

"Discovering content is the easy part. Managing it all is the challenge. The gallery below by Shirley Williams is a strong collection of tools to better discover, manage, and share digital content. And with the imminent death of Google Reader, several of these apps could help fill that huge hole (though not the one in your heart). Have a browse and let us know if you find anything exceptional."

More recently I've discovered some great new tools to read and share my favorite content which I've included here in this list. Whether you are a person who just likes to stay on top of the latest news, a blogger like me who needs a way to organize the vast amount of information that comes my way or a person who just enjoys sharing what they find with others you'll love this list.

"A survey by George Lucas-funded teaching website Edutopia found that Pinterest was one of teachers' five favorite professional development websites. That year, Pinterest launched a new hub, "Teachers on Pinterest" to grow their education community even more, starting with a lineup of "star teachers" curating ideas about elementary school math education, classroom management in middle schools, and homeschooling."

Mural.ly is a new tool (still in beta, launched last week) that is a cross between Prezi and mind maps. It's easy to use and share what you create (perfect for most students, teachers, and parents) but the real beauty of mural.ly is in its lack of structure.

This fascinating curated space from the UK provides a range of content around the topic of creativity. You can "Tailor your experience and have local creative partners, and content recommended by similar users, brought to the top. You can also recommend content and shape the Portal for others."

A really interesting scavenger hunt video collection curated with Mentormob

"Storyful is the first news agency of the social media age. We help our clients discover, verify and distribute the most valuable content on social media platforms."

"Here's a quick look at how to get started with eduClipper Presentation Portfolios"

"In a world ruled by content curation, every educator should be passing along social media strategies to students. The "That's a parent's job" mantra is not a sufficient excuse for ignoring your responsibility here. We're in this together. Students must be taught early and often how to create, locate, maintain and share content. And they need to understand the ramifications of everything they do on social media."

EduClipper is the latest in a string of Pinterest clones, true (See below), but Bellow's experience in education - in the classroom and with professional development - should give him a leg up in creating a tool that'll work in classrooms and that'll work for teachers. EduClipper lets you build clipboards into which you can post links, images, videos and documents and upload files to share with others. These clipboards can be private or public - that's a key dfferentiator between eduClipper and its competitors- clipped for one's self and/or shared to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Evernote, and Edmodo or via email.

LinkBunch is a free service that you can use to quickly send a group of links to your friends, colleagues, and students. To use the service just visit LinkBunch, enter the links that you want to share, and click "Bunch." When you click on "Bunch" you will be given a URL to share with anyone you want to see the links in your bunch. When someone clicks on the URL for your Bunch he or she will be able to open the links you bunched together.

A great post from Stephen Downes looking at assessment via contribution rather than collection/regurgitation.

"This week, we're launching the official Edutopia Pinterest account. Whether you're an avid pinner or just a beginner, follow us! Get started by watching the videos below for some ideas about what Pinterest is and how educators are using it."

""You are a mashup of what you let into your life," artist Austin Kleon recently proclaimed. This encapsulates the founding philosophy behind Brain Pickings - a filtration mechanism that lets into your life things that are interesting, meaningful, creatively and intellectually stimulating, memorable. Naturally, I was thrilled for the release of Clay Johnson's The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption - an intelligent manifesto for optimizing the 11 hours we spend consuming information on any given day (a number that, for some of us, might be frighteningly higher) in a way that serves our intellectual, creative, and psychological well-being."

"Evernote is a wonderful program which I use every day. At a simple level, it lets you store notes about anything that you choose. These are all synced so that you can access them using the PC / Mac / iPhone / iPad / Android / Blackberry (and other) versions of the software, as well as via the Evernote website itself. Having the notes available everywhere is a fantastic feature and it means that you should always have access to whatever you have stored within Evernote. Evernote has a wide range of potential uses for teachers, so I thought that I would share some of the ways that I use it as part of my own work, both in and outside of the classroom:"

I love Evernote and here's ten more good reasons why you should consider using it too.