Destiny Quest is the best thing to come to students (and teachers!) at Columbus North High School’s Library. Destiny Quest is a catalog to search for library materials – but it is so much more than that too.
Personalization: The first thing you should do when accessing Destiny Quest is to log-in and view your account. You can easily see what books you have checked out and their due dates. It’s not just a list though – it brings up full color images of the cover of each book you have checked out.
Users can also modify the “Theme” of Destiny Quest when they are logged in. A change in theme changes the colors and background pictures. It’s a small thing, but, as a teacher I’ve found that students love personalization and choice.
In addition to this personalization students can also add books to their own “shelves” these “shelves” are labeled “Books I’ve Read,” “Book I’m Reading” and “Books I want to Read.” To add a book you simply open up that book and select “Add to Shelf:”
Currently, my shelves are pretty bare, but I will be working to fill them up so I can see all the books I’ve read, keep track of what I’m reading, and most importantly, keep a ready list of books I want to check out and read in the future.
These book shelves are not just for me. With Destiny Quest students and teachers can make “Friends” in a social networking style and share their shelves with their friends. If I know that Susie and I have similar reading preferences I can browse through her shelves to find my next read.
If I don’t have a friend to browse her selves I can go to the Destiny Quest homepage and check out the top ten books being checked out of the Columbus North High School Library. Or, if I’m interested in the newest books our library offers I can browse the “New Arrivals” on the homepage.
Well, above there is lots of information about what “cool” things you can do with Destiny Quest, but what about it’s main job, searching for library resources? Destiny Quest does this too. In fact, Destiny Quest does a great job offering ways to sort through search results. For example, if I’m looking for information about Immigrants and I search “Immigrants” I get 134 results. To narrow that down I can choose to browse by: Author, Subject, Genre, Publication Year, Length of Book, Awards, Language and Format. So, if I am looking for non-fiction biographies on immigrants I narrow by genre and choose “Biography.”
I could give a million examples of all the great ways I can use the sorting tools in Destiny Quest, but you get the idea. Overall, I encourage all teachers at Columbus North High School to become familiar with Destiny Quest so that you can help your students use is (and use it yourself). I encourage everyone at CNHS to log-in, fill your virtual shelves, check out books, write review, make recommendations and overall to use the great tools out library has to offer!
Now, I’m off to fill my “shelves” and read a new book!
Personalization: The first thing you should do when accessing Destiny Quest is to log-in and view your account. You can easily see what books you have checked out and their due dates. It’s not just a list though – it brings up full color images of the cover of each book you have checked out.
Users can also modify the “Theme” of Destiny Quest when they are logged in. A change in theme changes the colors and background pictures. It’s a small thing, but, as a teacher I’ve found that students love personalization and choice.
In addition to this personalization students can also add books to their own “shelves” these “shelves” are labeled “Books I’ve Read,” “Book I’m Reading” and “Books I want to Read.” To add a book you simply open up that book and select “Add to Shelf:”
Currently, my shelves are pretty bare, but I will be working to fill them up so I can see all the books I’ve read, keep track of what I’m reading, and most importantly, keep a ready list of books I want to check out and read in the future.
These book shelves are not just for me. With Destiny Quest students and teachers can make “Friends” in a social networking style and share their shelves with their friends. If I know that Susie and I have similar reading preferences I can browse through her shelves to find my next read.
If I don’t have a friend to browse her selves I can go to the Destiny Quest homepage and check out the top ten books being checked out of the Columbus North High School Library. Or, if I’m interested in the newest books our library offers I can browse the “New Arrivals” on the homepage.
Well, above there is lots of information about what “cool” things you can do with Destiny Quest, but what about it’s main job, searching for library resources? Destiny Quest does this too. In fact, Destiny Quest does a great job offering ways to sort through search results. For example, if I’m looking for information about Immigrants and I search “Immigrants” I get 134 results. To narrow that down I can choose to browse by: Author, Subject, Genre, Publication Year, Length of Book, Awards, Language and Format. So, if I am looking for non-fiction biographies on immigrants I narrow by genre and choose “Biography.”
I could give a million examples of all the great ways I can use the sorting tools in Destiny Quest, but you get the idea. Overall, I encourage all teachers at Columbus North High School to become familiar with Destiny Quest so that you can help your students use is (and use it yourself). I encourage everyone at CNHS to log-in, fill your virtual shelves, check out books, write review, make recommendations and overall to use the great tools out library has to offer!
Now, I’m off to fill my “shelves” and read a new book!
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