Abstract:

New ICT technologies and Internet access have caused students to continuously receive information impacts. This information can be generated in different formats: text, photos, audio, videos,... and it is interesting for the student as long as he is able to discern the important content and filter the superfluous content. In this last decade an excess of information has been generated on the web (infoxication or information overload). In less than a minute, more than 98,000 tweets are released, more than 2,000 entries are posted on blogs, and the equivalent of 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube, so the reading process, assimilation of concepts and selection of content are complicates. In this context, content curation is essential.

Content curation is not a new phenomenon, although its application to the educational environment is very recent. Content curation is a strategy that consists in the analysis, tracking and collecting interesting information and contents about a certain topic, which is published on the Internet. It responds to the students' need to search, locate, filter, modify and distribute in a segmented way, part of the large amount of content that is generated daily on the web. In this way, the teacher acts as a content curator, that is to say, the intermediary person who continuously searches, groups and shares the information, which in his opinion is more relevant to the students. The teacher plays this role when he develops educational materials from existing resources.

In general, the term content curation refers to the activity that consists of defining the topic of information search, locating the most relevant and interesting content on the web, to later organize and classify the data. It is also possible to add value to the contents, to disseminate and even to measure the results obtained according to the audience to which they are destined. But, what advantages does this technique have? How to apply this strategy to the educational context? And what skills and abilities does the student acquire? Its main advantage is the saving of time. Although there are other benefits for the student such as: learning to filter information, search and selection of quality content, perform a synthesis work, share different content in order to achieve maximum dissemination, etc.

There are numerous tools that facilitate the application of content curation in the educational field. The functions and results of these applications have evolved significantly in the last decade. It is not a question of collecting information without more (RSS reader), but to make a critical evaluation of the contents. Some of these tools are: Evernote, Curata, Bundlr, Symbaloo, Scoop.it, Pinterest, CurationSoft, Storify, Flipboard, etc. The knowledge and use of these digital resources can be very interesting. Although the key is still how and where to use this technique; as well as determine the search for content, define the central theme, the type of audience, level of knowledge, etc. However, just like any other ICT resource that you want to implement in the classroom, it should help and complement the learning dynamic. Therefore, before designing an educational activity, it is advisable to reflect on the use of this technology and the added value it provides on learning. The purpose of this academic paper has been to show different tools applied in the content curation.

Keywords:

Flipped Learning, Pedagogical Innovations, Customized Learning, Learning Space Design, Advanced Classroom Applications and Technologies, Learning Analytics.