(An ELA Resources Curation Site for Educators and Students!)

Literary Muchness is a blog of curated literacy sites and resources for both teachers and students. I created this blog because every time I search for resources for my reading classes, I feel like I’ve gone “down the rabbit hole” into a vortex of distractions and information overload.

Literary Muchness is a site that K.I.S.S. (keeps it super simple). This way, both teachers and students can simply click on a link and magically travel to a fun, relevant, and engaging site that supports literacy activities for all content areas. Remember, you don’t have to be a reading teacher to use this site.

Each week I will add content and links based on subscribers’ suggestions and interests, so be sure to sign up for my Literary Muchness e-newsletter.

The curation tool I used for Literary Muchness is called “WordPress.” It is by far the most efficient, least expensive, and most user-friendly curation tool I have found.

Teachers, students, student teachers…any content area and MOST grade levels including higher level education: click below for dreamy, English Language Arts resources!

Visit This Site!	What You Will Find!	Free/Free Trial	Pay/Annual Fee
Word Search www.thewordsearch.com	Thematic word search puzzles. Pre-made word search puzzles or create your own.	Yes – Free
CommonLit https://www.commonlit.org/en/home	Standards-aligned literature, articles, passages. Check with your school district, too. You might have access to even MORE on CommonLit.	Yes	Yes (and check with your district, you have access to a free account.
No Red Ink https://www.noredink.com/	Reading and writing go hand in hand. Check out No Red Ink for all of your writing needs: practice, assessments, journal prompts, and more!	Yes	Yes (and check with your district, you have access to a free account.
NearPod www.nearpod.com	Create your own lessons or use one of hundreds of pre-made, standards-aligned lessons in every content area and grade level.	Yes	Yes (and check with your district, you have access to a free account.
Quizlet www.quizlet.com	An invaluable study tool for teachers and students! Use pre-made study sets for quizzes, vocabulary tests, and more. Teachers and students can create their own study sets, too!	Yes	Yes – to access all features, there is a paid, annual subscription. I subscribe to Quizlet because it is just that good.

Before you start curating content, consider exploring the following curation tools to help make your journey a little easier:

CURATION TOOLS:

Curation Tool	Efficacy in Curating Content	Ease of Sharing Content	Pros	Cpms
Feedly	Very efficient at curating content in Feedly. I simply had to click buttons for various topics, and they were added to my page. The content would be most useful to curate for current events and world issues.	I like that Feedly uses Google as a log in. That made it easy for me to login. It also makes it easy for me to share my personalized link. Feedly also generates a Newsletter that I can send out, too. While Feedly would be best for educators or proficient readers, it could be used with struggling readers, too.	*Feedly offers a free 7-day trial, so you can try it before you buy it. *Includes a wide variety of articles and AI. *Includes a Virtual Reality section which can take readers beyond the classroom.	*Only available through paid subscription after the 7-day free trial. *Feedly is not specific to education or literacy. *Uses AI, which can be seen as a pro or con, so I listed it in both columns.
GeekOutBlog	Geek Out Blog Project is a great place for teachers and students to begin curating content. It provides podcasts, videos, and graphics on how to start a curation system. It is perfect for those who are just beginning their curation journey.	I think the ease of sharing content is my favorite thing about this tool. It instantly creates a blog site for the user with a customized link. Updating can be easy if you are familiar with modifying blogs.	*Provides a linear approach to creating a blog and curating content all on one site. *Geek out Blog Project presents information in a variety of ways for diverse learners to learn. *This tool is free.	*Geek Out might be too basic for expert or advanced curators. *Updating and customizing the page can be tricky if you are not familiar with updating pre-made blogs.
elink.io	Elink seems to be the leader of the three curating tools, so far. It is a visual bookmarking tool that allows any online content with a URL to be collected and shared around any topic. Educators from around the world are turning to elink to help them share the best of the web with their students and colleagues.	I like that the eLink curating tool can be shared as a visual web page, sent as a curated visual email newsletter, or embedded onto any website. elink also has a Chrome extension that makes it easy for me to save important online content on-the-go.	*I like the way the software is designed. I feel it is easy to use *Elink is seamless for adapting where you want to place content on a website. *I think the graphics provided by Elink are appealing to various professional educators and students.	*One con is the pricing. I was hoping to find a teacher/budget friendly tool. *The pricing seems inconsistent. There doesn’t seem to be a set rate. Rather there are random additional charges. *When reaching out to Elink’s customer service, I had trouble connecting with an actual person versus a “bot.”
Pinterest	I rated Pinterest very high for efficacy of use because it is very user-friendly, and it allows educators (or anyone with any interests) to just click and pin areas of interest of content activies and resources	For ease of sharing content, Pinterst is by far the easiest to use. It is intuitive which makes sharing content 2nd nature.	*Pinterest could be the “people’s curation tool.” It is just that easy to use. And while I love using it to curate content for my students and fellow educators, anyone can use it for any interests.	*The biggest con for Pinterest is that it is a very public site. With that being said, it is not a monitored site, so students could accidentally find inappropriate content. *Another con for Pinterest is that it is one of those sites that can take teachers “down a rabbit hole” or a spiral of information overwhelm. Too many choices can be just as frustrating as not having enough choices.
EducatorsTechnology	For efficacy of use, EducatorsTechnology is fast and fun and easy to use.	EducatorsTechnology is a little more advanced than other curation sites, and so curating with this tool may become more complex. There are AI supports and videos available to help content curators get started.	*EducatorsTechnology can help students learn in new and innovative ways. *Teachers of all grade levels and content areas can easily find curated resources. *The variety of curated materials on EducatorsTechnology are rich in variety and can make learning more fun.	*A con of EductorsTechnology is that if teachers are curating materials for students, the availability of and ease of access of resources might make it more tempting for students to copy work more liberally (plagiarize). While this is true of many curation tools, with the depth and bredth of EducatorsTechnology, it might be harder for a teacher to identify.