Understanding Content Curation and the End of Organizing

Understanding Content Curation and the End of Organizing

In today's digital age, the abundance of information can be overwhelming. With a few clicks, we can access a vast array of resources on any given topic. However, the challenge lies in making sense of this information and extracting valuable knowledge from it. This is where content curation comes into play.

Content curation goes beyond simple collection and classification of resources. It involves a deeper level of thinking through synthesis and evaluation. The key phrase here is the inquiry process. To truly curate educational resources, inquiry must be an integral part of the process. This means critically evaluating each item and deciding what should be included and what should be discarded.

As the process of curating progresses, organization moves beyond thematic to contextual. Each new resource that is curated adds to the learner's knowledge and understanding. Themes support a central idea, while context allows the learner to determine why that idea or resource is important. By curating with context in mind, learners can better determine what to keep and what to discard.

One important aspect of content curation is that it is meant to be shared. It is not just for the benefit of the collector but for other potential learners as well. Curated items need to be organized, annotated, and published to add value to the collection as a whole. By sharing curated resources, others can participate in the learning process, comment on the knowledge, add to it, and ultimately enhance understanding. Learning, after all, is a social endeavor. The more perspectives we bring in, the better our understanding becomes.

The idea that learning is a social endeavor is further supported by the concept of participatory learning. When we engage in participatory learning, we connect with others, share our knowledge, and gain new insights. It is through this process of sharing that we can construct knowledge together.

While content curation is a valuable practice, the future of organizing information may look quite different. With the development of large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3, the need for manual organization may diminish. LLMs have the potential to unlock the value in our old notes by surfacing the right information at the right time and in the right format. This eliminates the need for extensive organization on our part.

Traditionally, we take notes as a form of insurance for the future. However, when we revisit these old notes, we often need to load their context back into our minds to understand their relevance. LLMs can help create an automated taxonomy of our notes, making it easier to navigate through them. They can even summarize key relationships or patterns in our thinking over time, providing a history of our minds on specific topics.