“Be part of the content ecosystem, not just a re-packager of it. Often, people think of themselves as either creators or curators as if these two things are mutually exclusive. What a curator really should do is embrace content as both a maker and an organizer.”
Besides being totally focused on improving Bundlr based on our community feedback, we sometimes take a look at other curation tools. We know Bundlr it’s not the perfect tool for every need, and there are very good applications made by great teams out there.
When we started working on Bundlr, back in 2010, there weren’t that many curation tools. But all of a sudden, they started popping up like mushrooms. Some didn’t last long, others are still online and kicking. Some just cloned features, others were game changers.
So, here is our list of the 8 best general-purpose curation tools:
The first one (launched in 2003). Used to be only about bookmarking and was used mostly by a tech-friendly audience. But it’s now under new management and aiming for the mainstream crowd.
It’s now the cool boy, and its community is growing very fast. Very simple to use, but remember, it works with just images and videos.
Curate content in the form of stories. Specialized for journalists.
The tool is more similar to blogging, that also offers content suggestions. Not our favorite interface design, though.
The most ambitious tool in terms of organization possibilities. Shame it’s in Flash.
A good-looking bookmarking tool, but it’s more focused on private curation.
As Zootool, a well designed bookmarking tool, with a minimalist approach.
Of course, our baby. We believe it’s the simplest to use and more flexible in terms of use cases.
Here’s a twitter list where you can follow them all. Did we miss any important curation tool? Let us know in the comments…
“We share links to helpful media in our tweets, status updates and even within our blog posts. But a thoughtful content curator is more than just a broadcaster of good info. It’s someone who understands their brand and their audience well enough to identify the relevancy of the content, as well as the best context for sharing.”
Remember when school essays used to end with a bibliography, referencing the books we read to write it? Now that’s a thing of the past. All research is done online, and we just add a list of links pointing to where we got our information.
But we didn’t use the entire websites as a source, usually just a couple of paragraphs in a blog post. And maybe one of the links points to a very interesting video, but it’s hidden under a boring URL.
That’s why a bundle is the ideal reference list. It knows there are different kinds of media (photos, videos, presentations or text articles) and it lets you interact with them.
Check out these examples:
But that’s not the only use for Bundlr in Education. Students can use Bundlr to share online study sources with a collaborative bundle. Teachers can provide students with a better looking collection of class materials inside a bundle.
Besides that, in the Bundlr community there are several educators scouting for new tools to help them in their teaching activites. Take a look at theses bundles:
“Curation is the act of individuals with a passion for a content area to find, contextualize, and organize information. Curators provide a consistent update regarding what’s interesting, happening, and cool in their focus.”
Have you wondered about what other bundles were being created by the Bundlr community? Now you can explore bundles by category, here: http://bundlr.com/explore
Make sure you categorize your own bundles so others can discover you and follow your bundles.
There are 8 categories to choose:
Right now there’s plenty of bundles in each category. But there’s a great chance some of your bundles aren’t yet listed. All you need to do is edit your bundle and pick the category that suits it best.
Oh and collaboration is free as of today.
