Destiny Collections

November 7, 2017

You know that library system I'm always going on and on about?  It's called Destiny, and every teacher and student has a log in for that system.  This is important to you because of and cool piece of tech called Destiny Collections.  With Collections, teachers can curate sources for a project and keep them all in one place for the kids to access.  So, rather than have your students go out all over the internet or get confused with all of the different databases available to them, you can put all the resources you want them to use in one place.  This makes the research part of the assignments go a bit quicker and allows the students to focus on the work at hand.  Here are a few examples. You will likely have to log in to Destiny to see them.  Just use your ID# for the username and the password is READING.  If that doesn't work, then use your ID# for both the username and password.

Non Copyrighted Images - This collection offers sites where you can search for and download creative commons licensed images for school, work, and personal use.

Christina Blake's Health class - This was a collection I did for Blake's students a couple of weeks ago.  The kids were studying mental health, so I put together five collections for them to use for quick research before they did their projects.  It really cut down on the search time since they were only given two class periods to research five aspects of mental disorders.

Body Systems - This is a collection that I put together in about 10 minutes.  I searched for body systems in Destiny.  I then found all the ebooks available and put them in the collection with a simple click.  The students can open the ebooks from the collections page.  I also clicked on databases after I searched and found some pretty good sites that were quickly added in as well.  It's all ready to use for my kids in very little time.

You could put the link to the collections on your Canvas page for easy access.  Also, your students can put together their own collections on various topics to share with their group members - kind of like a big Jigsaw lesson. Come talk to me about how you could use this in your classes!

There is no specific twist this week.  This resource applies to so many different things that it's tough to point out just one!  AVID instructional strategies on accessing digital resources, the T in VESTED as they transform their learning, and especially anything research related in your ELM units.