Reading Review Part B

After last week's blog post, I decided I wanted to take this week to further explore Follett Destiny, since it is a system I closely work with on a daily basis.  I would like to eventually create tutorials for staff and students which would then be (sooner or later) posted on a library learning commons website for our school.  But before I can do these tutorials, I need to have a better grasp on how to navigate the system myself.

Where to begin? 

Follett Destiny website

I first began with the Follett website (a natural place to start J). I wanted to see if Follett already had an easy how to guide for staff and parents that could be easily inserted into a future website. While I did not find a specific “how to” page for parents and students, I did find an option to register myself to become part of the larger Follett Community. Once registered, I navigated the website a little more.  I was surprised by the number of links to blogs, groups and other information. One component I really appreciated was the People Are Talking section, where you are able to start a discussion, ask a question or collaborate with other colleagues.  I look forward to spending some time reading some of the blog posts and discussion questions, as well as reading about suggestions on how to enhance the library.  I may even create my own blog on the site as this is one of my personal goals this year: to be more open to sharing my ideas and learnings in an online setting.

Before exiting Follett Community, I noticed there was a twitter feed at the bottom of the page, and so began following Follett Learning on Twitter as well.

                                                  https://www.follettcommunity.com/

Blog Post

Next, I wanted to see if I could find other teachers or teacher-librarians that were already using Follett Destiny, but that were not part of the Follett Community page I had just registered for.  I typed in “Destiny Quest Blog” and quickly found this page: 

                                   https://padlet.com/shannonmmiller/destinytipsandtricks

The page was created as a quick go to for any teachers or teacher-librarians who have questions regarding Follett Destiny. It is also a place where librarians can post tips and tricks about the system. What a great resource and quick go to. In fact, I have already posted a question and even began following Shannon (site creator) on Twitter.

YouTube

Where to next?  I quickly did a YouTube search to see what kind of tutorials were online for Follett Destiny.  The search came back with 2720 videos! YouTube will be a great place to visit when I am not sure about specific aspects of the system.

                               https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Follett+destiny

Teachers Pay Teachers

Knowing now that I have many places to go to for online help, I wanted to switch my attention to finding engaging activities I could use with students which would allow them to learn how to navigate Follett Destiny.  My usual go to for activities or ideas, is Teachers Pay Teachers.  For those who do not know, Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) is a community of educators who share their work, and their ideas with one another.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, as I wasn’t sure how popular Follett Destiny was. To my surprise, many teachers have created activities based on this library system!  The unfortunate part is that I teach at a French Immersion school, and I did not find anything in French.   My plan is to message some of the teachers who have created activities, and ask if I can translate their ideas/activities into French.

                                                   https://www.teacherspayteachers.com

QuickTime

At this point, I knew I had found some pretty great resources that would help me along my journey to learning Follett Destiny.  But, I still wanted to learn how to create my own tutorials using QuickTime (something I have never done before, and not sure I was capable of!). I did a quick google search and typed in, “how to take screen video from a Mac laptop”).  I found this one webpage that guided me step by step. 

                            https://www.imore.com/how-screen-record-gameplay-mac

I decided to create a short video for this blog post, and for my future library learning commons website.  I had originally created a 5 minute tutorial, however the size exceeded the 100MB capacity (I will need to figure out how to change that), and therefore was unable to upload it to this blog.  For the purpose of trying to upload a video to my blog, I created a much shorter version.  This is a short tutorial demonstrating how to enter and log into the Follett Destiny system.

I am proud of what I was able to accomplish this week and look forward to using these valuable resources I have been able to curate.