Wednesday, January 31, 2018

TRY OUR NEW "COLLECTIONS" RESOURCE!





Try our new Black History Collection, which includes interesting "outside resources such sites as PBS, TeacherVision, and YouTube, as well as our own MHS resources, again, all in one place.

I am proud to introduce an innovative RESOURCE for our teachers and students called "Collections." Collections is new component within our Destiny Discover Resources, which is, as the name suggests, a “collection” of our MHS Resources, including books, ebooks, and databases, as well as free resources from the web on a particular subject - all in one place. I hope you will find it a useful tool to supplement your curriculum and add variety to your presentations.  


Rather than students “Googling” all kinds of irrelevant ‘hits,’ on a topic, you can send them to one of our/your Collections that has every resource they will need.  Sending students on an open search, often results in them getting sidetracked (don’t we do this too?)  Instead, students can spend their time digging into the research by reading, watching videos, and learning all from within one “collection.”


How is this “different” than anything else?  It includes easy access to something you may not be familiar with called OER’s, Open Educational Resources, a partnership with the Department of Education that includes free, unlicensed/openly-licensed, and unrestricted content.  Many of these have lesson plans tied to State and National Standards.  


Another great feature of Collections is that YOU can also create your own. I welcome suggestions as to what kind of Collections you would like me to begin creating for you, and I am available to teach you how to build your own collections.  Within a collection, you can also easily include documents such as instructions, graphic organizers and rubrics so that directions and resources are all in one place.


Follett explains the appeal of Collections for teachers: Pair content with instructional goals and provide personalized learning for students. Save all your activities, pictures and videos in Collections to bring your lesson to life. Add already-created notes, worksheets, quizzes and more. Work virtually to curate supplemental materials for new units, lessons and projects. Add documents from Google Classroom or upload videos to set the stage for a lesson.


I hope you’ll try out this new tool soon.  It is a wonderful way to curate our OWN resources and add other free/educational resources as well.  Please contact me to learn more about building your own Collection!