In today's age of social media platforms and technology health care content and information is becoming more accessible then ever before. With having so many resources at our finger tips it can be difficult knowing which resources are reliable and trustworthy. As a professional working in health care it is crucial to ensure that the information your providing to the public is in an organized and concrete manner. Many health professionals are using content curation and content curation tools to gather, articulate and share curated information relative to their profession and audience. I plan to do this for educational and professional growth. After experimenting with various curation tools I learned that there were two main aspects I needed in a curation tool; (1) share-ability and (2) clear organizational capabilities. As a major component of this course I need to be able to share the content that I have saved, organized and created. The following is a description of my previous methods of content curation and a review of content curation tools that I have experimented with upon starting this course.
Where do you find, store an retrieve your information as a health care professional?
My first step when needing health information is generally to reach out to family members and colleagues. Typically, I get comfort in discussing certain aspects of health information that I may be searching for with family members first, as their experiences often guide me in the right direction. I also have family members that are established health professionals, so I often run things by them to see what they think based on their knowledge and experience in the feild. As I also work in the health care field, I’m surrounding with various health professionals that are very knowledgeable and current with trending health information. On most occasions I find the answers to what I'm looking for through open discourse with family and colleagues, some of which often share their own resources that they often use in reference to health information. I also have regular communication with both my doctor and pharmacist regarding my own personal health questions and information needs.
However, I, like many people, also search google and sift through the results to find resources or help pin point some answers for what I'm searching for. However, when using google as a tool I ensure that I’m aware of where the source is coming from and checking to see if the resource has any type of credibility. I also find information through various health professionals that I follow on social media. They often post resources, blogs, links, results and guides. I’m beginning to make the connection between information curation through utilization of various social media platforms. Many social media influencers use their platforms as a form of content curation.
When searching for information I would be wrong to say that everything I find is always good. I think being able to recognize poor quality information over good information is part of being a good researcher or ‘curator.’ I believe that the way you interpret and conceptualize information is fundamental when trying to find good quality information.
For example, if your searching for the ‘top 10 cold remedies’ in a general google search you shouldn’t have to go too far to find a good source. On the other hand, if your searching for ‘what role does eating organic food play in aging over the life course’ it may take you more than clicking the first few posts to find the evidence your looking for. The point is that you can find good results on google, but this is provided your able to determine the good from the bad. When using the information as evidence professionally or academically, I always ensure that my sources are credible and act as strong evidence to back up my statements. In my academic experience most of my quality information has come from academic journal by searching through the university database or sometimes google scholar. When searching for information I always ask myself two general questions: who or where did the content come from and when was the content created? This helps me determine whether the content is credible, reliable and/or meaningful to me. I too, like Christine, was also was heavily taught in my undergraduate the importance of finding reliable and credible resources.
An example of how I know my information is concrete is when it comes from a government website and or legislation that is enforced by the province. While working in LTC I used the Residents Bill of Rights and the Ontario Long-Term Care Act frequently as a resource to many of my professional health information inquiries. I navigate through Health Canada often to seek news, updates and other resources for both professional and personal reasons.
If I find what I believe to be a good resource online or an interesting and educated person on social media I will typically bookmark the website or follow the individual. As I usually save, bookmark or follow information or resources I’ve found meaningful I find them easy to retrieve. In the short time of starting this course, I have realized however, that they're simpler and more organized ways to host good information. The challenge with just bookmarking or saving something is that unless I intend on going back and looking at it, it just sits there and then overtime I eventually delete it, eventually not remembering why I bookmarked it in the first place.
I’ve always been interested in finding a way to express and articulate myself in an online presence demonstrating both my personal values and myself as a professional through resource sharing. I want to use my skills and education to create a voice online that can influence my viewers about my concerns about various aspects of our health care system. I believe that what's held me back is the inability to find and display organized, concrete and reliable enough so that I feel comfortable sharing with other people. Or perhaps it's because I haven't found the right platforms or tools to help me do so.
My initial review of my first experience trying content curation tools:
I have continued on experimenting with Mendeley, Pocket, Pearltrees, OneNote, and Diigo. Each of these tools have both proven useful in many ways and some actually pair well together. I have enjoyed all of the tools and plan to continue exploring them as the course moves forward. My goal is to have one main space or "motherboard" I like to call it, where I can refer to all my content in one place. Presently, I have my content spread out on a few of the mentioned platforms and not all in one spot. Ideally I would like to have one space where I can keep all of my content in the most organized and efficient way possible.
I had a positive experience using Pocket as it is visually appealing, sync-able to multi-devices, and easy to share on social media platforms, which I find particularly useful for this course and for the #MHST601. I found a variety of content that I found very suitable and relevant to this course.
OneNote
I really enjoy OneNote as the tittle states its self all, you can keep all your information in one spot. However, you do have to put a considerable amount of effort into inputting your information into OneNote and spend some time organizing it yourself. I plan to use OneNote to curate all of my course content into one place. As you can see in my attachment I put all my information pertaining to weeks 1 and 2 of the course in one place.
I found Mendeley to be my least favorite of all. Perhaps this is because I initially started out using Pocket, which I fell in love with. While the content in Pocket was predominantly from news articles, Mendeley generates information from scientific databases and provides more evidence based research and content. I personally found the content I came across to be rather dated (over 10 years old +).
Diigo is a search engine add on that’s easily accessible between windows. It allows you to save, annotate, and highlight information in any window. The content that you save is archived in your Diigo library where you can review snippets of all your highlighted sections from articles. This is a true life saver from the old school note taking and highlight. I'm definitely putting all efforts toward moving away from the old pen and paper and to go completely digital as there are so many more tools and resources, such as Diigo, that can help you become more efficient in note taking, as well as content curation. You can see that the sections showing up in the below screenshot of Diigo are sections of the article that I've highlight. The numbers on the far right hand side near the title are referenced notes I created throughout the article.
I find Pealtrees to be very user friends and visibly appealing, like Pocket. I'm particularly fond of being able to save and categorize content. I believe this is a feature that Pocket does not have. I also enjoy the simplicity and navigation of this platform. I\m also fond of being able to easily share references onto your social media accounts.
In conclusion I plan to use OneNote as the motherboard of all my content. In addition I will be using Pocket and Pealtrees to find and organize content. I might use Diigo as a way to save content both from Pocket and Pearltrees into the same place Lastly, I may continue Mendeley to see what else it may have to offer if I feel the resources I'm using aren't sufficient.
In following up to this review I have fallen back into the habit of using bookmarks in my browser due to the convenience. However, I have pooled all my curated content into categorized and formatted sections into OneNote with the intention of sharing with the class. I find this aligns with my initial hope of gathering all resources into one area for quick and organized reference. I am however, still in the experimenting phase and getting used to different platform.
References
“Long Term Care Homes Act, 2007, & Ontario Regulation 79/10.” Http://Health.gov.on.ca/En/Public/Programs/Ltc/Docs/ltcha_guide_phase1.Pdf, ontarc.com/documents/LTCHAandRegs04112013.pdf.
Every resident: Bill of rights for people in Ontario long ... (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.acelaw.ca/appimages/file/Every Resident - Bill of Rights.pdf
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