WWPS Technology

How to Edit a Resource Image in Collections I just stumbled across the image option in Collections this morning. I have to say, "I love it!" I know the teachers in my district have been patiently awaiting the option to add your own image to a resource in a Collection. The functionality that was quietly added is powerful and easy to use. You can view the short video below to see how to edit a resource image within a Collection. Way to go Follett!  Follow these simple steps: Click on the menu option within a resource, and select the edit option. To add your image simply do the following. Take a screenshot of the resource you'd like to use. Click the continue button, select the upload option to locate your image, and finally click the save button. I think you'll find this latest addition to the Collections tool will be a welcomed addition! Happy Collecting!

How I Use Collections as A Central Office Administrator As the Director of Educational Reform, Compliance and IT in my district I get to interact with parents, administrators, educators, support personnel and students in many different fora. On a weekly basis, I am often interacting with educators as we build curricula together. Almost as often I find myself, working with both educators, parents and legal representation on policy matters. As we became more and more comfortable using Collections for curricula purposes I've noticed a million and one ways I could use Collections as an administrator. It's almost become a joke in my district because I don't think a day goes by without me uttering, "Ya know, you can use Collections for that." Since August I've... As the summer months began to wind down the opportunities for collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders increased dramatically. I found myself using Collections to do the following: Respon

Using Collections for Curriculum Curation Follett's Early Adopter Program We have been using Collections since the spring of 2017 when our district served as an Early Adopter participant in Follett's newest addition to Destiny Discover. Educators started using Collections immediately during our curriculum development process. It was the easiest access point for administrators, teachers and support personnel.  Educators in our district easily saw how Collections fit into our well established Lab Classroom model. Teachers and administrators loved how they could add the "Add to Collections" bookmarklet to their Chrome browser to add resources simply and efficiently to a shared Collection. Collections & Our Curriculum Development Process Our district has a strong process for developing collaborative lessons using synchronous (face-to-face) and asynchronous tools. A Learning Coach will work with a classroom educator during an entire unit of study to develop the

It's so Much More than Just a Curation Tool Jason See, Follett's Director of Classroom Solutions, gave educators at ISTE 2017 a sneak peek of Collections, a new addition to the Destiny Discover suite of tools. There was a buzz in the air, and I'm sure many educators looked at it as an answer to their curation woes. Collections delivers exactly as advertised. Nader Qaimari, President of Follett School Solutions, June 29, 2017, in a press release said, "Collections is the first step toward making Destiny a content discovery and resource collection tool designed for use in the classroom, the library and at home." In previous blog posts, I've shared how Collections allows educators a singular place to curate Open Educational Resources (OER), web pages, videos, images, educator created resources and documents. In just a few short months of widespread use in our district, we've found it to be so much more! We've used Collections in the following ways:

Using Collections Like a Pro...Google Drive Permissions Once you've started to use Collections there are some easy tips that will allow you to use Collections like a pro! This blog post will review how to do the following: Set the Appropriate Google Drive Permissions Google Drive Permissions Collections are so visually appealing. You'll want to ensure that your resources take advantage of the screen scraping technologies built into resource curation in Collections. Whenever you add a resource to a Collection using the Add to Collections BookMarklet a screenshot of the resource is included as a visual representation of the resource. Whenever you're using an online drive such as Google Drive or One Drive you'll want to make sure you set your permissions to public. This will allow the resource to be displayed with a screenshot from the resource versus a generic login screenshot. Additionally, the description of the resource will contain information particular t

You've Built your Collection, Now Let's Edit... Once you've learned how to build a Collection you'll want to edit the details of the Collections as well as, all of the resources curated in the Collection. This blog post will review how to do the following: How to Edit a Collection How to Edit Curated Resources How to Delete Curate Resources Each of these important tasks is very simple to accomplish and quite intuitive to use once you've started to use Collections. I'll be "Captain Obvious" in this blog post just to lay out the directions in a step-by-step process.  How to Edit a Collection Once you've created your Collection you may want to edit the basic settings in the Collection. If you create a Collection form the +Add a Collection icon you'll most likely fill-out each of the steps in the 3-step process (Title/Description, Grade/Subject, Image/Color). However, if you add a new Collection from the BookMarklet app you will hav

How to Create a New Collections & Basic Settings... Once you've learned how to access Destiny Discover's Collections tool you'll want to start on your own Collections. This blog post will review how to do the following: Create a new Collection & Configure the Collection Details Add Resources to your Collection using the BookMarklet or the Upload a Resource Method Access Lesson 3 - Create a New Collection (prototype companion tool to Collections) Collections is an incredible way to collaborate with your peers on curriculum development. Our district uses GSuite to build collaborative documents for our units of study. Collections fit seamlessly into the process and provide greater flexibility during the creation process. Educators can add and curate resources during the brainstorming process without having to decide where or whether or not the item fits into the unit plan. Before we can get to the rich collaboration tools we need to first learn how to add, e

How to Access Collections... In a previous blog I spoke about Destiny Discover's newest addition Collections. In this post I'll discuss the various ways to access Collections. As with most applications now a days, there are a variety of ways to access Collections. You can access Collections in the following ways: Via the Destiny Discover Chrome Extension or the Destiny Discover Homepage Via the Bookmarklet App Via the Collections URL Via Rhode Island's RICAT site (Only applicable to RI school districts) Destiny Discover Chrome Extension In our district we have added the Destiny Discover Chrome extension to all of our district's Chromebooks via the Google Management Console. This allows our users to access their school's Destiny Discover catalog once they do a simple Google Search.  Searching for Ecosystems using the Chrome Extension In the image above you can see that you can access resources directly from our school's catalog. End user

What is Follett's Destiny Discover Collection Tool? Follett School Solutions describes their newest addition to the Destiny Discover suite of tools, Collections, as “A group of carefully selected resources. Think of a Collection like a digital scrapbook with audio, video, slideshows, along with documents and photos .” Simply stated, Collections, allows educators to curate all of their resources for a lesson or a unit of study in one simple place. Click this Link to Learn More About Follett's Collections The Anatomy of a Collection We have already started to use Collections to curate all of the t eacher-created documents, web pages, video clips, Open Educational Resources (OER), and paid content necessary to instruct our students day to day. The "Anatomy of a Collection" image below illustrates how resources within a Collection are displayed. The details of a Collection are located along the top-left panel of the Collection. Owners and editors of

How We Use Aspen to Help Us Reissue Our Student Chromebooks Each September & Collect Them In June Each September the technology department in our district is responsible to reissue approximately 3,800 Chromebooks to our students across 6 schools. Our district uses Aspen to assist us with our management of over 4,200 Chromebooks for students, and every staff member. This blog post will explain how we use Aspen's Assessment tool to manage communication between classroom teachers, and the help desk.  As you can well imagine it is a tremendous task to move each student's Chromebook from their previous year's classroom to their new classroom in time for the new school year. What makes it even more difficult is that in the last weeks of August it's not uncommon for student to be shuffled from classroom to classroom, and sometimes moved to another school within the district. Why Use the Assessment Definition All of this movement demands that we have an easy way for

Taking a Deeper Look at Pando  A Help Desk Technician's Perspective Pando provides a lot of power to our help desk technicians in performing their duties. Our district has two, full-time employees servicing almost 4,200 devices. Every student, and WWPS employee has a Chromebook device. These devices are taken home by our students, and all of our employees; one can imagine the amount of wear and tear inflicted on the devices. Our district is considered a self-maintainer shop, and we do all of the hardware repairs. The process for submitting a help desk ticket is a little different for our students and our employees. Our employees submit a help desk ticket via Aspen, and our students drop off their Chromebook in their school's main office. The secretary submits the help desk ticket in Aspen on behalf of the student. The illustration below is the simple help desk form that we use to begin the process. Submission Form in Aspen Once the ticket is submitted in Aspen it

Using Pando & Aspen to Manage Our 1:1 Chromebook Program Aspen is our district's Student Information System, and we use it for almost every aspect of our business as a school district. We use Aspen and Pando together to run our helpdesk. Pando is one of the built in tools in Aspen that helps us manage our 1:1 Chromebook environment.  Everyone in our district uses Aspen, and can submit a helpdesk ticket within the application. How to Submit a Helpdesk Ticket: The video clip below illustrates the simple process of submitting a Helpdesk ticket. Using Pando: A Quick Overview Using Pando for our district means that a relatively small work group can organize, evaluate, and attack our Helpdesk needs for approximately 4,500 end users.  All of our tickets are concentrated in one area, and our end users receive automated updates as their ticket is processed. Our district has been using Aspen/Pando as our helpdesk solution since August of 2010. This short video explains t