Curating Efficiently

Susie spent hours collecting and curating resources for her upcoming unit on cells. She is able to successfully use much of what she has found when implementing her plans.The following year, when it is time to begin the unit on cells again, Susie forgets about the resources she curated. She essentially starts from scratch, performing the task of searching, saving, and sorting once again.

This example displays Susie wasting invaluable free time shows the true value and potential of the Symbaloo project and curating resources in general.  Susie could spend time working on revising and enhancing her resources instead of digging up the resources she had already previously found.  As teachers, we do not always have the free time to do everything we want to do so something has to give.  The value of her lessons might be enhanced if she had more time to fine tune the finer details involved by reflecting on the previous lesson and making small changes.  Instead, she has wasted time rehashing the works he had done previously.

There are many options for Susie to save time and create better lessons that motivate and inspire her students.  As previously mentioned, Symbaloo is a great option to create a webmix of online resources.  Pinterest is also a popular tool to use  and both it and Symbalo are able to shared with teachers and students.

If Susie is not comfortable with various web 2.0 tools, she could always create folders on a flash drive or computer.  She could even create a binder with materials labeled by unit.  No matter what method she prefers, the importance is creating a system that is efficient and purposeful.  Time is something that we can never get back.  Once it is spent, we can never get those minutes, hours, and seconds back.  We always have to take time away from something else in our lives to make up for that lost time.  Susie should save time and curate efficiently so that she does not waste precious time each year.