Monday, February 17, 2014

A Video Tutorial To Help You Add Your Symbaloo Webmix To Your Homepage In Follett's Destiny Library Manager

  
We have our library collection in the library and online organized within Follett's Destiny Library Manager. It connects our school community to the books, eBooks, databases, and eResources that students, teachers, and others needs.  
We even catalog student work such as this awesome eBook created with FlipSnack by our 4th graders, I Spy Van Meter 

Our online library also holds a special place within our library and school.  

We connect everyone to dozens of digital tools and social networks. I use Symbaloo to organize this part of our online community. Symbaloo is a beautiful visual social bookmarking tool that we use on our laptops, iPads, and other devices.  

All of our students in kindergarten through 12th grade use Symbaloo to find and organize the resources we all use; as do parents, teachers, and others within and outside of our community.

This year I merged the two together by adding the main Symbaloo webmix for the elementary and secondary to each Destiny's home page.  

It was super simple to do and I wanted to share the directions with all of you.   You can also watch the tutorial above where I tell how to do this.  
First, log into your Destiny as the "Destiny Administrator."

You will see "Edit Page" in the upper right hand corner.

Click on that button.
Within "Edit Page", you will go to the first line called "Introductory Text."

You will click on the tiny pencil way to the right of that first line.

This will take you into "Edit" of that Introductory Text.
You can then change all of the "Introductory Text" including Title and Body.

Within the "Body" is where you want to paste the HTML for your Symbaloo webmix to include on the Destiny homepage.

But first, you have to go grab that Symbaloo HTML.
 You will go to the Elementary Symbaloo webmix, which is the starting point for our young learners.
 Next, click on the third button at the top of the screen.  It is the "Share" button.
 It will bring you to the page where you can do all kinds of things to "Share" your webmix.
Within this page, you will find the "Embeddable Code" on the right hand side in the middle.

Click on that button, copy the HTML, and then go back to the Destiny Introductory Text page.
You will go the "Body" part of this page, paste the HTML code from your Symbaloo webmix, and click on "Save" at the bottom of that box within Destiny.

The other great thing.....Since it is an embedded Symbaloo webmix, everytime it is updated or changed, it will automatically update within Destiny too.
Also, please note that you can several different things within the "Body" of your Destiny Introductory Text Page.  I have included a scrolling marque and a MackinVIA button that opens up within MackinVIA.

It is just that easy!  And one more way to bring your library and school together online.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks Shannon - it so cool to see that you can provide easy access to so many great resources from your Destiny homepage. I'm so glad for your students that your "online library also holds a special place within our library and school".

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  2. Hi Don,

    You are very welcome. :) We love that Destiny allows us to embed things onto the "Home" page. This really helps us in bringing our library and community online.

    And one very special way we bring everything and everyone together everyday. Thank you. :)

    Shannon

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  3. Thanks again for sharing this! I am just getting started with MackinVia and have not even shared it with all of our staff quite yet. We have a login portal for our students called 'launchpad' that is similar to symbaloo with the direct links to frequently visited sites. I mainly do library but am working with our tech specialist to get the media center more user friendly :-)

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  4. Hi Shannon! I love your blog and am so grateful for you sharing all of your expertise and fun ideas. What program did you use to create your tutorial video above? We're looking to create an online toolbox of tutorials like this. Thanks!

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