Assignment #1: Reading Review Blog Post #1 (Issue, Interest, or Opportunity Identification and Key Word Generator)
When thinking about my current teaching situation, I have one topic that is clogging my brain at this moment: utilizing my new Destiny Quest online catalogue in my elementary library. I have been using this OPAC for two weeks now and had about one hour of training before it was installed in my library. Each day is a matter of survival with my classes, as I am learning to use the system right along with my students. My goal is to learn all of its features and thus assist students in accessing the information they need to become savvy 21st century literate learners!
This is going to sounds soooooo basic, but since I know virtually nothing about my new OPAC, I just decided to google “how to use Destiny Quest in elementary library.” After trying a few hits, I stumbled upon a YouTube video called Destiny Quest Tutorial. It was super basic, but just went over how to show students how to search for books, create resource lists, and find the items they want in the library. I decided that rather than try and teach my students (the blind leading the blind), I would show them this YouTube clip and have the students get proper instruction to begin with. I emailed the link to my work and am going to show the clip on Monday to my Intermediate classes.
Through some literature searches, I want to read about other teacher librarians’ experiences with Destiny Quest, what works and what doesn’t. I want to find out how to add Titlewave, how to catalogue properly, how to motivate students to write book reviews and recommendations, how to create book lists for each teacher’s current research project, how to teach students to find the resources they are searching for, etc. In short, I want to make our library an even better place than it already is by bringing it into the homes of our students and their families.
Well done. A good, focused blog post that outlines your main goal in supporting your library and students with some new technology. I look forward to following along in your journey an seeing all that are able to master about your OPAC over the next couple of months!
Hi Aaron
I actually meant to hit DRAFT when I wrote this up this weekend but I hit PUBLISH instead. I was going to go over it today, as I knew that there were a few areas of the criteria sheet that I hadn’t addressed yet. Ha, oh well, you are on top of things and I see it is already marked. Next time I will make sure to hit DRAFT before I am ready to submit it.
Carrie
I’ll be interested in your results using Destiny Quest. My district has Destiny Quest as part of our online system but I am not very familiar with using it. My daughter is learning to use it at her middle school right now and listening her talk about it I know I would not be able to teach my students how to use it. Good luck.
Hi Karen
I am curious what you mean about your daughter talking about it. Do you mean that your impression is that it is too complicated? I have actually found it to be fairly intuitive. I downloaded a couple of YouTube clips for Destiny Quest tutorials and showed these to a few classes. I learned about the system as I showed the clips! Haha. That’s what happens when life is so busy. Here is one of the clips that I watched with my students, showing kids how to search for books on the shelves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOFckMwcP4
Carrie