Historically, curation has most often signified a display of ostensibly related and collected artifacts in a cultural institution like a museum, contextualized by a knowledgeable "curator." Online curation tools today also allow for a public dissemination of gathered information. But they also make possible the development of shared understandings through collaborative annotation, commenting and collecting, as well as the potential for widespread dissemination. Online curation, it could be argued, is as a social act.

Additonally, the act of curating might itself be thought of as a creative act. By curating, you not only produce an artifact that is often shareable and which may contain some element of your orwn, original thought, but you also begin to cultivate an online identity as a curator.

This week, we'll explore these two related aspects of online curation as a social and creative act: who we curate with and for and how that shapes our online identity.

Please respond to one or more of the following prompts (and to each other) in the discussion below:

• What are the social aspects of curation? How can I take advantage of others' curated content, and how can I share my own?
• What are the key factors in compelling people to visit one curated set of resources over another?
• How do the ways we represent ourselves online (identity) compare to the ways we represent ourselves offline? What does a digital environment bring to the mix?
• How do notions of credibility impact curation? Do poetential audiences matter in terms of who we're curating for?
• What are the educational implications of considering curation as a public, social act versus a private one?