Destiny Discover Basics - Future Vision Project Post #3 Reflection and posting of final Vision Artifact



Transcript of screencast

Introduction
My final vision project for LIBE 477 is a Destiny Discover Basics screencast that is aimed at students and staff in the Vancouver School Board who are not familiar with this search interface. This 4:28-minute-long video introduces Destiny Discover, shows how to access it, and demonstrates how to search for books. I have created a transcript of the screencast and embedded it in the video description box on YouTube for increased accessibility.

After attending a Follett Destiny Discover training session facilitated by Camille Sullivan, I wanted to solidify my learning by teaching others about what I had been taught. I had colleagues who weren't able to attend the workshop and I wanted to share my tips with them. I thought a screencast would be an efficient way of sharing my knowledge with a wide audience who could watch at a time convenient to them. I used tips from the workshop and information from the Follett Training Manual to write a script for the screencast. I was successful in keeping my video to under five minutes so that it would hold the interest of people with busy schedules and students with short attention spans.

Development
My project is not unique. As Follett Destiny is a popular library management system in many areas of North America, it isn't surprising that there are many videos similar to my Destiny Discover tutorial. Follett themselves produce a video for educators on how to use Discover. A quick search of YouTube produced dozens of Destiny Discover tutorials like this one by J Rath.

VSB Library Icon courtesy of Vancouver School Board
However, I believe that it is helpful to have a video specific to my library because it shows what our desktop icon looks like and gives the library.vsb.bc.ca url that will get Vancouver School Board students to the right page. The video shows actual books in our school's library and it demonstrates how to access Destiny Discover in our district. As our school district switched to Follett Destiny just over a year ago, there are many students and staff who could still use some tips on how to search the catalogue.

Technology
My goal in this project was to try out a new type of technology. I had never attempted a screencast and it was an excellent learning experience. I looked at both OBS Studio (suggested by my instructor, Aaron Mueller), and Screencast-O-Matic and decided that althought OBS Studio had some interesting options, Screencast-O-Matic was more intuitive and suited for my first try at creating a screencast. The challenge with this simple program was that there wasn't an option to edit my work, so I had to restart every time I made an error. I was humbled to realize just how many times I would have to redo my work in order to get a result I was satisfied with. I was happy that my wireless headset worked well with my computer at work and I may just try another screencast now that I've got the hang of it!

When setting up my recording, I wanted to create an environment as close to what a student would see as possible, so I got in touch with a staff member in our district's IT department to get instructions for creating a generic student account at my school. I named it Geronimo Stilton just for fun! This process went smoothly and worked well as a way to demonstrate the system.

One aspect that I still need to work on is embedding the video or a link to the video in our school's website. I attempted to edit the library page for our school, but there was an error message that led me to believe YouTube links weren't allowed. I'll have to learn more about how our school website is set up before I can share via that site.

My Thoughts on Destiny Discover
Although the VSB switched to Follett Destiny over a year ago, I really hadn't used Destiny Discover much until this month. When I tested it last fall, it was incredibly slow to load and often wouldn't load at all. Now, I find that it is still much slower than Destiny Classic, which causes me to choose Destiny Classic over Discover a good bit of the time. The good news is that Destiny Discover is frequently updated and users are encouraged to submit feedback to the developers. I remain hopeful that Destiny Discover will get quicker to load over time.

Screenshot of Destiny Discover showing green and red availability triangles

Despite the issues with speed, I really enjoy using Destiny Discover with students to quickly give them a visual of which books in a series are available. The green and red triangles make so much more sense than the tiny 0 of 1 available text in Destiny Classic.
Screenshot of Destiny Classic search showing examples of availability text descriptions

Sharing
After uploading my screencast, I took a deep breath and emailed the link to all 140 teacher librarians on the VSB's teacher librarian mailing list. In less than 24 hours, I'd heard from nine teacher librarians with some great feedback. Some were already using it, some plan to use it in their orientation next September, some had learned something, some wanted to see any future projects I made, and one suggested that we add the video to our district's online TL resource page. I will also share this post on twitter and send the link out to my school's staff via email.

Reflection
Throughout the course of my studies toward my diploma in teacher librarianship, the theme of relationships has been important. I believe that relationships with students, staff, and other teacher librarians are essential to the success of my library program. As I am a new teacher librarian, most of the time I feel like I am on the taking side of relationships as I benefit from the experience of others who are willing to mentor me. It was satisfying to create and share this project as it gave me a feeling of giving back to those who have helped me. I look forward to continuing to create and share in this way in the years to come.

Works Cited

Follett School Solutions, Inc. (2017). Follett Destiny Library Manager Onsite Essentials Training Guide. Follett.

Rath, J. (2017, September 17). Destiny Discover Tutorial. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcVmutqUJLA

Tour of Destiny Discover - for Educators [VIDEO]. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2018, from https://www.follettcommunity.com/s/article/Tour-of-Destiny-Discover-for-Educators-VIDEO

Comments

  1. TheresaDecember 1, 2018 at 10:02 PM

    Holly, Thanks for creating this resource and sharing about Destiny. I can see myself using this to share with educators in my own district. You are the best!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. HollyDecember 4, 2018 at 10:52 AM

      Thanks so much for your kind feedback, Theresa! You made my day! I'm glad you're part of my PLN.

      Delete
  2. dgDecember 4, 2018 at 10:15 AM

    Holly, I enjoyed your video! Our sd uses Insignia, but I can myself doing a similar video in the future :)

    You have a great voice for listening to and I thought the length was just right!
    Have a nice winter break!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. HollyDecember 4, 2018 at 10:52 AM

      Thanks for watching, Dawn! I'd recommend Screencast-O-Matic as an easy way to try it out for yourself. It's very simple!

      Enjoy your winter break as well!

      Delete

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