Week 7 - curation tools

When sifting through the variety of curation tools that my online colleagues reflected on, I came across one that I immediately felt would fit very well into my classroom. Here is the example: Pearltrees example. This link comes from Nikki, and could be used for a lesson on the Paris metro. I particularly like the cleanness of Pearltrees and that much useful information was grouped so nicely together for her students. She included images, videos, basic information, and additional resources that would help her students gain an understanding of what the Paris metro is really like without having been there.

I could do a number of activities with this tool. So many cultural ideas come to mind immediately. Perhaps one of the most helpful uses would be using Pearltrees to introduce a project to my students. I created a more simple collection of useful information for students on tapas that I could put into this format as use as an intro to a tapas themed project combining research and presentational elements. Here is my example: http://pinterest.com/leticiaclen/tapas/. I much prefer the look of the Pearltrees curation tool to that of Pinterest for a classroom setting. In pearltrees I could curate links that would provide students with websites and videos that I chose to help guide them through the project. If my ultimate goal was to have students present and cook a Spanish tapa of their choice, providing basic history to go along with the presentation in Spanish, I could send my students directly to language authentic materials avoiding all the non-authentic or unrelated information that they tend to find. They would have access to the videos that I chose instead of trying to gain an understanding on the theme but not knowing where to look.

I think I will definitely be using a curation tool in the future to help direct my students through projects. This information learned will be very useful in my classroom.