Digital Literacies in the Age of
Curation
Ilana Snyder
Monash University
Art Gallery of South Australia
Turner selfportrait
Heide Museum of Modern Art
Samstag
Museum
of Art
Laurie
Anderson &
Lou Reed
Curation is used in 4 fields of inquiry
•
•
•
•
marketing
online communication
education
literacy studies
Eliot van Buskirk
Key Questions
1. What are the discourses and practices
associated with ‘curation’ in digital times?
2. What are the implications of these discourses
and practices for critical literacy education?
Practices
• In literacy studies, practices have been broadly
understood as ‘regular and sustained socio-cultural
activities, involving elements of knowledge, identity
and being, that vary across social settings, resulting in
different kinds of engagements with writing and
artefacts of literacy’ (Prinsloo & Baynham 2013, p.
xxxi).
• Practices are passed on through interaction and activity
and within them ‘knowledge is constituted and social
life is produced, maintained and changed’ (p. xxxii).
‘Practices’ are habits, dispositions, routines, customs
and traditions that provide an account for how the
social order is constrained, reproduced and modified.
Application of ‘curation’ in
Museum Studies
1. Marketing
Three forms of content production
• content creation
• content aggregation
• content curation
Rosenbaum (2010)
‘Who are curators? What can they gather and republish? Do they have the right to get paid for
curation? If so, who’s adding the real value, the
content makers or the curators/publishers? For
creators – people who’ve spent their careers
making content and trying to sort out an economic
model – curation can seem like an end-run around
hard work. And so the conflict ultimately comes
down to this: Is curation about saving money? Or
about adding value? The answer, it appears, is “yes”
to both.’
2. Online Communication
Three periods of online
communication
1. Introduction of computer-mediated
communication in education in the mid1980s
2. Emergence of the web in the mid-1990s.
3. The popularisation of the term web 2.0, used
in the first decade of the 2000s to describe
the transition from static webpages to a
more dynamic web
Rheingold on curation
‘an act of self-interest that enriches the commons
and benefits everybody. I need to search, scan, and
select the best resources I can find for my own
personal interests, and by making my choices
available to others, I create a resource for many
besides myself. Curation is also a signal to others
who share my interests, people I probably would
not have known or known about otherwise, who, in
turn, suggest resources to me. I feed the networks
of people who do me the honor of valuing my
choices, and they feed me back. It’s about knowing,
learning, sharing, and teaching, all in one.’
Rheingold on the responsibility of
educators
‘Young people need to learn how to scan, select,
decide and deploy information effectively and
know how to use information tools such as
search, RSS, dashboards, Pipes (a composition
tool to aggregate, manipulate and mashup
content from around the web) and filters.’
Hugo Liu on curation
‘In real life, a curator is a vanguard of cultural
heritage. Curators oversee museums and
institutions. By talking about digital life as
curation, we imply that it is an aesthetic project.
I am the proprietor of the Museum of Me ...
Curating your online web presence is just a
gateway drug. Trust me, it will spread to real life
in a big way. The food we eat, the friends we
keep, the habits of our day.’
Social Curation Summit
‘In the era of tweeting, liking and +1ing, how you share
content is often just as important as the content itself …
The conference is the must-attend event for anyone
focused on the proliferation of visual social networks and
the diverse array of content curation services that have
drawn the attention of users, investors, and brands alike
… Harnessing the power of social curation for marketing
campaigns, product launches, promotions, events, and
every-day projects is what Social Curation Summit is all
about. Join us as we explore how the social graph is
transforming from a network of who-knows-who into a
dynamic interest graph of who-knows-what discovered
through social curation.’
3. Education
Partnership for 21st Century Skills
‘Today’s graduates need to be critical thinkers,
problem solvers and effective communicators who
are proficient in both core subjects and new, 21st
century content and skills. These 21st century skills
include learning and thinking skills, information and
communications technology literacy skills, and life
skills. Twenty-first century skills are in demand for
all students, no matter what their future plans –
and they will have an enormous impact on
students’ prospects.’
Barbara Bray on curation
‘A curator pulls together and oversees collections of materials.
The Internet, Web 2.0 tools and social media have expanded
the traditional role of publisher to almost anyone. The role of
curator is changing too. Anyone can “curate” online material,
pulling together their own collections.’
‘I started a new Scoop-it “Curate your Learning” and now I see
why curating is important. When you create a Scoop-it, you
put in the tags. Some of my tags are: curation, curating,
curate, curation skills, curating learning, 21st century skills ...’
According to Siemens, a curatorial
teacher
‘acknowledges the autonomy of learners, yet understands the
frustration of exploring unknown territories without a map. A
curator is an expert learner. Instead of dispensing knowledge,
he creates spaces in which knowledge can be created,
explored, and connected. While curators understand their
field very well, they don't adhere to traditional in-class
teacher-centric power structures. A curator balances the
freedom of individual learners with the thoughtful
interpretation of the subject being explored. While learners
are free to explore, they encounter displays, concepts, and
artifacts representative of the discipline. Their freedom to
explore is unbounded. But when they engage with subject
matter, the key concepts of a discipline are transparently
reflected through the curatorial actions of the teacher.’
4. Literacy Studies
Rosenbaum
His notion of ‘the curated me’ as a metaphor for
millennials who have grown up with a 24/7
news cycle and reality TV and who know the
power of branding and publicity: ‘Every day they
act as their own digital publicists, curating and
monitoring the “me” brand’.
John Potter
‘It is quite natural for those who choose and have the
means to do so, to share a mediated and “curated”
version of their experience when they make, edit, and
present media texts of various kinds from the online CV
to the photo gallery, from the blog to the YouTube clip.
Whereas in earlier times, apposite words to describe
activities around publication may have been “written,”
“edited,” and/or “produced,” it is quite clear that they are
inadequate to capture all the self-representational
activities or practices in networked, digital culture. The
word “curated” does so by subsuming all of those
practices and adding others that are possible in social
media.’
Potter on curatorship
‘an active cultural and literacy practice in new
media with its own ways of reading and writing
the self, its own lexis and grammar …
[It’s about] ‘knowing how the different forms
you are working with work together to make
meaning intertextually and for which purposes
and audiences they are successful’.
Final comments
What people do on the internet
• content creators
• content aggregators
• content curators
The challenge for teachers
• How do we build these new understandings of
the discourses of curation in our literacy
classrooms?
• How do we encourage our students to engage
actively, creatively and critically with new media –
and with legacy media – in these changing times?
• How do we encourage our students to engage
actively, creatively and critically with all media in
the age of curation?
Gracias!