In a presentation yesterday by Dr. Deborah Everhart, talking about Web 2.0 and the future of teaching and learning at Berkeley’s new Center of Next Generation of Teaching and Learning, she used the familiar mechanism of transitions from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. One of the transitions she described, from Buying to Self-Publishing sparked a thought. This was very much in the context of higher education, but it extends further.
For context, realize that we’re being inundated with knowledge. One of the roles of our personal learning networks is to follow people who sort through the memes coming along and reframe them into new ideas, posts and more. People like my ITA colleagues and many others (e.g. #lrnchat instigators) are worth following (virtual mentorships) because they are essentially serving as curators for knowledge.
So these people are self-publishing. In higher education, we think of authors of textbooks, although in a sense they’re curating knowledge as well. And we’re seeing movements where teams are beginning to author texts, not just for publishers but in open access contexts as well. If we extend this, communities are, increasingly, similarly curating information.
And, really, they’re co-curating. Wikipedia ends up being the ultimate co-curated body of knowledge. It’s co-creation, but because it’s pulling together bits of knowledge from other places. In the case of innovation, where experts are solving new problems, that’s co-creation, but capturing resources around topics and combining them is a combination of curation and creation, co-curation.
I note that this is not a new term, as librarians have been apparently using it for a while, but I think it’s an important concept in the overall context of learning together; co-creating libraries (have you ever received a request for the books you think are most critical for X :) of resources and references. It’s a part of the larger picture of creating personal learning environments, personal learning networks, and personal knowledge management.
When I reflect on the fabulous learning that comes from my networks (such as those listed above and ITFORUM), I am really really grateful to those who contribute so that we all learn together. Thanks!
“Co-curation” is a wonderful concept. It’s the democratizing of information in Web 2.0. Although you didn’t mention blogs as a form of co-creation, I’m sure you would agree that they, too, are a way of organizing, cataloging, and retrieving information for maximum utility. One of the benefits I enjoy most about my own blog is that my posts along with comments from others provide a searchable archive of concepts, ideas, and critiques that are important to me and, hopefully, to others with similar interests.