Scoop.it curation: online learning

My next two posts will use a fantastic web 2.0 tool called Scoop.it, which allows a ‘curator’ to collate and share web pages and content in the form of a magazine page. Once you (the curator) have created your magazine page (a curated topic) you can share this to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and your Wordpress blog.  Readers can comment on individual posts and ‘rescoop’ the page. Businesses could certainly use Scoop.it as a marketing tool to drive traffic to their website.

I have experimented with a couple of topics – one of which will form the basis of my next post on Apple. This is my curated topic on the experience of online learning. As you can see, it is possible to capture the posts and embed them on a wordpress blog, although only 10 webpages that can be shown, even if your curated topic has more. The layout is in the form of slides, unlike the magazine style curated topic which can be accessed here.

Scoop-it has a useful blog which records user experience as well as reporting on improvements and updates and the knowledge base (FAQ) provides step-by-step instructions on curating your topic. Scoop-it is free in its basic form which will be perfectly adequate for most people, although there is a limit of 5 topics per month. However, if you want to customise your posts more fully, receive more detailed analytics and export to more social media locations, there are paid for plans.

The following is an inteview with Guillaume Decugis, the Scoop.it CEO who discusses social media content and trends.

Class activity

Ask your students to research a particular business topic and to produce their own Scoop-it topic and then share with others through their Facebook site. Alternatively they could embed the materials on a blog.