This week we’ve taken a look into ways to share and organize content for your community. Today, I wanted to take the time to share a great example of this. A few short weeks ago, Cory Hartlen and I had the privilege of traveling to Miramichi, NB to visit some great people. We met a group of educators from District 16, District 15 and from the Netherlands, who gathered together to share how they are using social media for educational purposes. They also shared some of the successes they have seen as a result.

There is so much to share from this visit that I wanted to break things down into a few posts. Today though, I simply wanted to share a few ways that some of the people from District 16 and beyond, organize and share valuable information for their own communities. I hope that it will inspire you to think about how you are curating resources for your community.

There are several ways to organize and share content with your community, but the key is understanding your community first. This is something that can often be forgotten. When it comes to sharing information with their educators Joey Savoy from District 16 explained to us several different ways that he finds and shares educational resources with his colleagues.

LiveBinders.com is one way that Joey shares resources. It is education specific and allows you to create virtual binders to share information with others and to find ‘binders’ on a variety of topics. This allows you to create and grow binders on a wide variety of topics that can be shared throughout the district or community. For example, a science binder can be created so that all science teachers in the district can access and review it.

Joey also explained that he uses Symbaloo.com which allows him to compile great resources on various topics and display them all on one page with quick links. This is a fast way to provide access to a page full of useful resources on a specific topic.

Another way that Joey stated he gathers resources, is by following some popular twitter chats such as #iwb (Interactive White Board – which they use in District 16)  as well as #edchat and #edteach. Finding relevant discussions and following along or participating in them, is a great way to find new and valuable resources.

I realize these resources are predominately education focused, but the important thing to recognize is that combining the right informational resources and curation tools is very important. Recognizing what works for your community and how they can quickly access what they need, makes the process of collecting these resources worthwhile.

I look forward to posting again about our day in Miramichi and sharing a more in-depth look at the great work these educators are doing.

What are some ways that you curate valuable resource to share? Be sure to check out Chapter 3 of our latest e-Book for more information on Content Curation.

Melanie Thompson is a Community Analyst at Radian6. When she is not engaging with the Radian6 community she can be found reading or blogging. Find out why she calls herself Mrs. 20 Q’s by reaching out to her on Twitter @MelanieAThomp.

Tags: content, curation, district 16