Daring Ed Tech

"we should worry about search engines becoming the arbiters of truth." De l'importance de comprendre comment on accède à l'information et de reprendre la main.

People who use Google are given the impression that they are interacting with the data out there, but they are actually interacting with Google and its view of the world.

"They are prediction engines that constantly refine a theory about who you are and what you are going to do or want next. Together, they create an universe of data for each one of us."

"In a 2010 paper published in the Scientific American journal, Tim Berners-Lee warned about companies developing ever more “closed” products and “data islands”.

"Morville, in his book Search Patterns, says that the first and second results receive 80% of attention. The vertical approach suggests to the user the idea of a single result that fully answers the question, enclosing possibilities and preventing alternative realization."

Or in other words, is our acceptance of what we see in search results eroding our ability (or willingness) to consider alternatives and employ critical thinking?

My favorite statement, "we must always be aware and well informed about the intentions of companies, and never stop having multiple options for any service."

This article was an eye opener for me. I had never questioned Google before.

Bill French has just released and made available for purchase a Google Docs based mini-app he has developed, which allows anyone to curate online content without needing to have a website or blog.

The app whic is called Qyurate, allows to capture and edit / curate content found on the web, to archive and store it by sending to a dedicated email, and to publish it via RSS.

More specifically:

Instead of emailing your annotated content items to a blogging platform such as Tumblr, email them to qyurate@gmail.com.

A running process at qyurate@gmail.com email address will see your posts, parse them into your available content for your feeds, and organize them by tags.

Tagging your posts is achieved by adding a name-value pair in parenthesis at the end of the email subject line.

Example:

The Art of QR Codes (qyurate:entconnect)

In the above example, this curated post will be categorized under “entconnect”. It is also possible to tag a post for use in multiple categories.

This makes it simple to dispatch curated items to more than one destination via separate RSS feeds.

Price: you name a price starting from $10

P.S.: Unfortunately the description and info about this new tool is quite concise and the "demo" provided on the landing page is accessible only by those who have previously bought an eBook by Bill French ($8).

* What I have done to get access without buying, is to provide a fictitious PIN when asked, and it seems you can go through it without problems.

Reference page: https://gumroad.com/l/qyurate

add your insight...

Great information for creating content. 

An excellent perspective about blogging as content curation.

Great visual representation of blogging as curation

Curate using this visual map

This will be helpful to share to those wondering about content curation.

Valuable collection of the art of curation from Robin Good.