Curate

 Donna Roberts is currently the school library media specialist at Mount Holly Elementary.

Implementation 

Mrs. Roberts has been using Google Classroom to digitally curate especially for the last two years since Covid. She felt really limited by wearing masks and students responded better to read aloud videos so the face of the reader could be seen and read as well. Mrs. Roberts curated information such as book talks and author interviews. In the past, Mrs. Roberts worked in a high school and she would curate Symbaloos for students working on specific projects. I love the idea of using Google classroom to share resources with the students. Having a Google Classroom for each grade level will help make sure students are getting information that is relevant to them and their needs. I think it is important to also share curation knowledge with the students, so they can create their own collections.

Resources 

Mrs. Roberts uses many types of resources. She uses videos often for elementary-aged students but found she curated much more at the High School level. She had the entire collection of Salem Library Press. This was both a digital and physical collection. She uses the Library of Congress for primary source collections. She loves having a National Geographic subscription because it gives access to every digital issue and has great information. There are many resources now available for digital curation. I loved using Pearltrees and Google Sites to create collections of resources or booklists.  

Collaboration

Mrs. Roberts did not feel like she collaborated often for curation. She finds information for people that need help, but she has never worked with someone sharing resources for one collection. I feel like collaboration can be creating a collection for a person. I think collaborating on one collection could be useful when choosing primary sources and such because the classroom teacher will have a greater knowledge of what her students need. 

Challenges

The biggest challenge Mrs. Roberts has during curation is making sure resources are appropriate. It is important to check and double-check what is in the collection. I have opened political cartoons from the Library of Congress and known immediately they are not appropriate for elementary ages. It is important to read and view content before sharing it.