Why Content Matters: Defining Personalization

Curating content makes sense of all the content that others are creating. According to Joe Pulizzi’s article “Forget Content Curation, Focus on Original Content in 2012” there is no curation without original content.

Curation is helping me find resources and learn new ideas from people I never knew. Like so many others, I am getting caught up in curation. I go to my Scoopit daily to find new resources from reputable sources that I am following. I never would have found the article from Joe Pulizzi unless I checked my dashboard.

But I agree about the main concept of his post. “There is no curation without original content.” His website is about content marketing and shares a graph about brand awareness that is pretty cool.

If you want to brand yourself or a concept, you need to write about it. My focus is on personalizing learning and articles and resources that appear on that topic are all over the place. I am following content curators and finding original content creators on personalized learning. I need to find good content creators that have original ideas, research, and resources to help my research.

1. Some companies are using the term “personalized learning” when actually they are designing courses or platforms where the teacher can control who accesses particular content or quizzes based on their answers. To me that’s customized and still teacher-directed. There is a difference between personalization and differentiation. One is learner-centered; the other is teacher-centered.
2. Teachers are confused about the term “personalized learning” because they only know how to teach they way they were taught. So when I come in and talk about student-centered learning and starting with the learner, it just doesn’t happen right away. There are teachers that are posting lessons using the term “personalized learning” but have all control. I say “maybe this is the first step” to moving to student-centered learning, but it is not there yet.
3. If you are curating content about personalizing learning, don’t just rescoop it without commenting on it. Curation needs your take on the article especially if the direction is different than yours. Explain why.

Creating content is important. The Internet is full of biased information and, in some cases, wrong information. We need your content and we need you to curate by adding your own comments and opinions. Be aware of buzz words and anyone using terms just to get work.

Check out my 11 Tips to Personalize Learning. It starts with the learner and determining how they learn best. They own and drive their learning. Much of the content I am finding still has the teacher working harder than their students. We need to start with each learner and have them figure out how they learn best. They are all unique just like their fingerprints.