1. show diagram
2. describe components
3. start with ovrs
4. video description of how it works - locate, add widgets, select video...
5. then take content from ovr and save.
6. discuss and show ease of tagging
7. show retrieve (show multiple tags)
8. the show complete organic video
Curating Online Video Repositories for Teaching Sociology: A Resource Discovery, Mapping, Retrieval Framework
Abstract
The abundance of online multimedia content presents both opportunities and challenges for instructors seeking teaching materials. While these digital resources offer rich pedagogical potential, discipline information networks have largely failed to identify them, thereby creating a significant discovery gap for those seeking suitable content for course inclusion. We propose empowering instructors to become active curators of discipline-specific online materials by way of a user-friendly framework that combines RSS and social bookmarking technologies. We demonstrate how systematic curation using these tools enables instructors to efficiently discover, map, and archive online video resources that align with their curriculum needs, and in the process, we ultimately document an extensive collection of sociology-related video websites, blogs, and channels largely uncited in the literature. Our findings indicate that content curation can help bridge the distance between the growing wealth of online resources and their practical employment in the digital classroom.
Introduction
College instructors now face a stark contrast to the multimedia scarcity of the early 2000s, having access to an overwhelming amount of relevant content. Commercial websites ceaselessly upload new material, while user-sharing platforms host an ever-expanding array of professional and amateur productions—news reports, interviews, speeches, lectures, demonstrations, documentaries, movie and television clips, and specialized instructional content of all sorts. Indeed, the current volume of video creation has outpaced the capacity of academic disciplines that continue to employ traditional strategies for purposes of content identification and curation.
Although instructors in some fields like economics have attempted to address this challenge by creating specialized journals focused on teaching with online multimedia (e.g., Journal of Economics Teaching), publications in our discipline have effectively ignored online sites which create sociologically relevant content. Consequently, even materials that could easily enhance instruction likely remain unknown to most teaching faculty. This limitation has significantly constrained our ability to integrate digital resources into sociology education, a challenge that became particularly acute during the 2020 mass transition to remote teaching when instructors across academia scrambled to identify and deploy quality digital content (Fyfield, Henderson, and Phillips 2021, Nguyen 2022).
However, some pioneering efforts have emerged, most notably The Sociological Cinema's work in online video curation (Andrist, Chepp, and Dean 2010-2024), which broke important ground by identifying and describing individual videos in terms of their teaching significance. The individual-video curation approach taken by its website creators, while valuable, nevertheless falls short of the systematic content identification and communication framework the discipline now requires. Any emergent system should encompass not only individual pieces of content but also content-creating websites, blogs, and video channels, especially given the rapidly expanding volume of relevant media.
Our paper therefore addresses the current curation challenge by shifting the primary unit of analysis from individual videos to collections of videos. We do this by examining the distributional context through which site developers make digital film accessible on the Internet: Online Video Repositories (OVRs)—our term for sites hosting aggregated video available for on-demand streaming.
An OVR approach advances our capacity to identify and productively use video in two immediate ways. First, as quality OVRs are identified, instructors will encounter videos aligned with their teaching interests. Expanding scope from individual videos to OVRs will encourage instructors to examine collections of available content. Moreover, as they engage with video-makers' work, these interactions should foster online creator-instructor networks (Palmer and Schueths 2013)—key to sustaining video-production activity.
Second, focusing on OVRs rather than individual videos mechanically streamlines curation processes, facilitating the ability of curators to bring quality content to attention. To this end, we employ RSS (Really Simple Syndication), an application that systematically links and organizes Internet sites in a clean window interface. RSS enables immediate video identification and access from a common web location. Our chosen application, Protopage, offers extensive user-browsing capability and graphically maps the OVR landscape, capturing continual changes as creators upload new videos and as new repositories are discovered. This creates, in effect, living archives that serve ongoing curation activity. In tandem with RSS, we also employ a content cataloging and retrieval system based on social bookmarking (SB) technology. Our application of choice is Pinboard, which allows users to easily save and tag OVRs, videos from them, and other online resources for future reference.
In all, this paper makes two unique contributions to the literature. It is the first to employ a digital curation strategy to locate and process learning content in sociology, and as far as we know, in any of the social sciences. Second, our examination of OVRs represents the first systematic attempt to identify online video resources with relevance for teaching sociology. Beginning several years ago with a survey of open-access video repositories across the social sciences, our research has revealed an extensive video inventory. While our initial study (Miller and CohenMiller 2019) provided only limited coverage of sociology-focused sites, subsequent search activity has identified approximately one hundred and fifty additional repositories, most created by sociology instructors for their students. In addition, we curate many more from related social sciences, and many non-academic OVRs as well that have relevance for teaching sociology.
discuss video curation in sociology
introduce workflow framework.
The curation framework employed in this paper is derived from a holistic workflow model for working with online multimedia earlier developed by the first author (see Miller 2011). It specifies how instructors and students can effectively engage with digital learning content (videos, podcasts, photo slideshows, interactive graphics) as both⁸ consumers and producers. It presents an iterative, cyclical information-processing system with five interconnected components: (1) location, (2) collection, (3) conceptualization, (4) production, and (5) distribution.
[Diagram Here]
1. Location relates to techniques and applications that help to find relevant multimedia content on the Web. In addition to becoming familiar with those websites with the best work, other vehicles are search and discovery engines, newsletters, alerts, and directories. RSS is a particularly useful tool for staying abreast of emerging online content from a central web location.
2. Collection relates to the function of recording and cataloging multimedia in order to retrieve for later use. Social bookmarking provides the most efficient mode for both collecting and organizing a large body of online multimedia. Some services, such as Pinboard, can also assist in locating multimedia by drawing on media shared among the bookmarking community. Devising useful tags for content description and evaluation are important within a social bookmarking system.
3. Conceptualization involves ideas and operations that detail how multimedia will be created and employed for learning. It includes design, substantive content, and pedagogical objectives, and can be facilitated by various applications that stimulate thinking about building and using multimedia.
4. Production entails the techniques and applications for making and/or repurposing multimedia. Production is no longer limited to those with specialized skills and access to costly equipment and software. Production now can be accomplished with such online tools as presentation makers, media editing programs, cartoon and data visualization applications, and most recently, AI videomaking applications.
5. Distribution makes digital content available for instructional purposes by placing materials online. It encompasses websites from which we can access digital content, as well as the various user-sharing sites and applications that now allow us to easily put content online, including course management systems, which can limit content access to only students.
add
1. add social psychology as another course - include some psych ovrs.
2. add a few pol sci ovrs to social strat tab ....
3. add geog and anthropology ovrs to diverse tabs...
4. add data visualization to res methods tab.
5. add 1013 and 2013 course tabs
6. add social change tab (see historical ovrs)
7. add collective behavior and social movements tab...
8. add a tab for individual users
I couldn't find one single, definitive article that perfectly covers *all* the possible integrations between RSS and social bookmarking for curation. The best approach depends on *which* RSS reader and *which* social bookmarking service you prefer. However, I can offer some search strategies and concepts to help you build your own workflow:
**Search Strategies:**
* **Specific combinations:** Search for things like "Feedly Pinboard integration," "Inoreader Delicious workflow," or "[Your RSS Reader] [Your Social Bookmarking Service] IFTTT."
* **General concepts:** Search for "RSS curation workflow," "social bookmarking for research," or "combining RSS and social media."
* **Tool-specific tutorials:** Look for tutorials on your chosen RSS reader (e.g., "Feedly tutorial") or social bookmarking service (e.g., "Pinboard guide"). These might mention integrations or related features.
**Workflow Concepts:**
1. **Choose your tools:** Decide on your preferred RSS reader (Feedly, Inoreader, etc.) and social bookmarking service (Pinboard, Delicious, etc.).
2. **Sharing/Saving features:** Explore the built-in sharing or "save for later" features of your RSS reader. Can you share directly to your social bookmarking service or a related service like Pocket?
3. **Browser extensions:** Install the browser extension for your social bookmarking service. This will let you quickly save pages from your RSS reader.
4. **IFTTT/Zapier:** If you're comfortable with automation, explore IFTTT or Zapier. These can connect your RSS reader to your social bookmarking service. For example, you could create a rule that automatically saves any starred item in your RSS feed to your bookmarks.
5. **Tagging and organization:** Develop a consistent tagging system in your social bookmarking service to organize the content you save from your RSS feeds.
6. **Regular review:** Set aside time to review your saved bookmarks, add more tags, and perhaps share them further.
By combining these strategies and adapting them to your specific needs and chosen tools, you can create a powerful system for curating online media using RSS and social bookmarking. Don't be afraid to experiment!
Another AI Source
⁵
- Use search engines to find0 authori 9mte6tative blogs, news sites, and publications related to your topic.
- Look for the RSS icon on websites to locate their feed URL.
- Explore blog directories and online communities to discover relevant RSS feeds.
- Use search engines to find0 authori 9mte6tative blogs, news sites, and publications related to your topic.
- Popular options include Feedly, Inoreader, The Old Reader, or Google Reader.
- Consider features like categorization, filtering, and integration with social media platforms.
- Popular options include Feedly, Inoreader, The Old Reader, or Google Reader.
- Add the RSS feed URLs from your chosen sources to your aggregator.
- Organize feeds into categories or folders based on topic relevance.
- Add the RSS feed URLs from your chosen sources to your aggregator.
- Utilize the aggregator's filtering capabilities to remove irrelevant articles based on keywords, publication date, or source.
- Read through summaries or headlines to select high-quality content that aligns with your audience's interests.
- Utilize the aggregator's filtering capabilities to remove irrelevant articles based on keywords, publication date, or source.
- Write brief summaries or annotations to provide additional context or analysis.
- Tag articles with relevant keywords for easier retrieval.
- Write brief summaries or annotations to provide additional context or analysis.
- Connect your RSS aggregator to a social media management tool like Buffer, Hootsuite, or SocialBee.
- Set up automated posting schedules for your curated content across different platforms.
- Customize post descriptions and visuals as needed.
- Connect your RSS aggregator to a social media management tool like Buffer, Hootsuite, or SocialBee.
- Efficiency: Automatically updates you with new content from your chosen sources, saving time on manual research.
- Consistency: Helps maintain a regular stream of relevant content for your audience.
- Reach: Enables sharing curated content across multiple social media platforms with ease.
- Quality control: Always verify the credibility and accuracy of the content you curate from RSS feeds.
- Attribution: Clearly credit the original source of the content you share.
- Audience engagement: Add your own insights, commentary, or questions to foster interaction with your audience.
Although many more repositories doubtless remain undiscovered, our current sample enables the first meaningful generalizations about the state of online sociology video.
CHANGE-elaborate:
Focus on contributions to (a) content identification and then (b) description of curation process.
In demonstrating our RSS/SB strategy, we provide three basic contributions to the substantive curation of discipline-related OVRs. First, we engage in descriptive mapping—locating, organizing, and displaying sociological OVRs and their most recently uploaded videos on RSS pages. Second, we provide evaluative guidance, recommending sites particularly suited for instructor use. Third, we focus on OVRs more precisely for purposes of teaching application within discipline subfields. To illustrate, we aggregate academic and nonacademic OVRs together in a single RSS page that might assist those who teach courses related to social stratification.