Participate: curating with communities

I’ve added a new platform to my list of curation favorites.  The Participate Learning search engine offers access to thousands of educator-vetted K12 learning resources–apps, videos, and websites.

Apps, for both iOS and Android, as well as other learning resources, are browsable and searchable by keyword, category, or standard.  Searches may be filtered by whether an  applications free or paid, by grade, by content type (and platform).

Resources include expert reviews and are judged by a rubric focusing on Educational Content and Function, Features and Production Value, and Engagement.  Reviews also provide examples of classroom use.  Each app, video, and website may be accessed, downloaded from the ParticipateLearning platform.

And there’s more.

ParticipateLearning allows users to create and collaborate on collections, curated groups of educational resources around themes or topics or, perhaps, around the tools used for a particular discipline or a lesson to share with students, colleagues and parents.

Users may copy and build on the collections of other community members.  Collections can be made publicly accessible and searchable by title or user-created tag or kept private. The platform is very handy for staging content or tools to remember for later use.  You may add collaborators to your collections and have private conversations.  Educators may add any digital resources and personal files to their collection, even if they are not in the ParticipateLearning search engine. An iPad app is available through appoLearning.

And there’s more.

ParticipateLearning also features ParticipateChat, a resource linking to twitter hashtags and live twitter chats. You can browse for live chats by date or browse an alphabetical list of hashtags to follow, with links to moderators, participants and feeds.  A truly exciting feature allows users to create transcripts of chats and a collection of all the resources mentioned during the chat!

ParticipateLearning is a fabulous way for you inspire a bit of curation with a very low learning curve and a very effective way to connect your teacher colleagues with their own networks.

Filed under: chat, collaboration, collection, crowdsourcing, curation, dashboards, technology, twitter, twitter chats