21st Century Learning and Teaching

One of the biggest challenges that content marketers face is creating visual content. Visual design is a specialized field requiring the tools and skills of an artist to communicate viscerally what cannot be expressed through words. The dilemma is this : how can content creators supplement their textual content with attractive images without any experience with design? The solution is curation.

How does visual content curation work?
Curation involves finding great content as opposed to creating it from scratch. As a curator, you’re the funnel that distills quality content from authoritative sources to serve it to customers. You acknowledge and link out to sources, and add your own commentary to provide readers a broader perspective.

The visual content curation process is easier as you only focus on gathering relevant images to tell a story, make a point, offer up as evidence, or reinforce the written word. The visual content you can curate from third-party sources include:

Professional photographs from copyright free image repositories/stock photo galleries. Example : Pixabay, Flickr and Pexels. Terms of commercial use are indicated, and some may require you to attribute the original creator.Screen-shots from websites can be legally published to articles or blogs discussing the content of those images. For more information on how they are covered under ‘fair use’, read this article.GIFs and animated stickers from GIPHY or Gif Bin are entertaining and dynamic. They break the monotony of text in long-form blog posts, and instantly grab attention on social media pages.

Free quote cards on Pinterest available for saving to file, sharing or printing.Data visualizations – graphs, pie charts, maps and diagrams – that communicate key facts and data quickly, clearly and easily. If you’re using them from a company’s website, proper attribution is necessary.You can also create visual interest by adding quotes – customer testimonials or expert advice – in blog or social media posts. This task can intersect with influencer outreach or cross-promotions, where you request quotes from authoritative voices in your niche who have an established social media presence. It is also a good opportunity to shine the spotlight on your loyal customers.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://blog.scoop.it/2011/11/30/lord-of-curation-series-gust-mees/

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Content+curation

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Curation

Get Challenged

A PLN is not necessarily a group of like-minded individuals. If that were the case, you wouldn’t be seeking out other opinions in the first place because it’s likely you already have a group of people in your life who feel and think exactly the same way as you.

PLNs provide you with people who have different viewpoints on hot topic issues and, if they’ve been vetted beforehand, have a wealth of knowledge, credentials, and research to back up their arguments.

As educators, sometimes we haven’t fixed the problem because we keep using the same method to solve it. A student is struggling with math and we send them to the same tutor, or explain it the same way, or use the same software. Sometimes we need someone to come in and point us in the opposite direction before a solution is found.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/practice-learning-to-learn/

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/dos-and-donts-adapting-to-21st-century-education/

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=PLN