Curating Content in One Place: Transforming Curriculum Development for Educators 

West Warwick Public Schools in Rhode Island serves a small community of 30,000 residents just 15 miles south of Providence. Despite facing higher poverty rates and lower median income compared to surrounding areas, the district is dedicated to improving student outcomes. With three elementary schools, one middle school, one high school, and two alternative education settings, the district needed a way to increase access to resources for students, teachers, and parents. 

Jim Monti, the Director of Educational Reform, Compliance & Technology at West Warwick Public Schools (WWPS), was proud of the organic curriculum development model used by the district. This model incorporated a wide array of resources including aligned websites, paid subscription resources (both digital and print), open educational resources (OERs), student work examples, instructional video clips, and differentiated resources, all compiled using Google Drive™. 

“Collections served as a beacon cutting through the fog, taking what was once a soupy mess and giving it clarity. The beauty is in its simplicity. It’s all about curating anything and everything educators need in one place to meet the needs of PreK-12 students. Our district finally has a curation tool that’s easy to use, easy to revise, and easy to share with anyone who needs access to the resources,” Monti stated. 

Instant Access to Curated Content Aligned to Curriculum 

“Collections solved the district’s curation problem,” Monti said. “Individuals now can continue to work on documents within Google Drive and add them quickly to a collection. District-housed units of study are readily available to every teacher and substitute teacher in the district. Instead of worrying about which Google Drive folder a document is in, users can simply share a collection.” 

Within the first few weeks of joining the early adopter program, the district’s Library Media Specialists and Curriculum Specialists were providing curated collections aligned with the district’s units of study. These collections were shared with teachers, administrators, and support personnel across the district. Collections made it easy to share curated resources with students via Google Classroom, including teacher-created documents, web pages, video clips, OERs, and paid content. 

“The district found, in Collections, the perfect complementary tool to the curriculum development process,” Monti said. “District-level staff can create shared collections that are automatically shared with employees once they are added to a specific group. New employees no longer need to wait for a colleague to add them to a shared document or folder. We finally have a systemic solution to a systemic problem.” 

Today, the West Warwick Public Schools district uses Collections as a vital curation tool in developing rich units of study across curriculum areas. “With Collections in place, there is no need to worry about providing individual educators access to resources. Instead, educators can focus their energies on the real work – providing students with rich, engaging educational experiences. That’s the work, and that’s where the focus needs to be,” Monti emphasized. 

His advice to other districts? “You don’t have to look to the future or to an international, educational powerhouse like Finland to increase your ability to meet the needs of your students. Follett’s new Collections tool in its Destiny Educator Platform is available right here, right now to help you better meet the needs of your educators and students.” 

Overcoming Access and Budget Limitations 

Despite having rich and diverse resources, access was challenging due to the limited curation capabilities of Google Drive™. Educators were wasting time, struggling with access issues, and frustrated by multiple logins. Documents were owned by various educators and students across the district with differing permissions and rights. As the person responsible for curriculum development and implementation, Monti was kept up at night by the chaos of curation. The team considered other solutions, but they were either cumbersome, costly, or required drastic changes to established processes. There had to be a better way. 

This better way materialized in the spring of 2017 when WWPS joined a Follett early adopter program for Collections by Destiny®, a simple solution that allows educators and students to curate everything they need – websites, audio, video, films, slideshows, documents, and photos – in one easy-to-access place. 

“Collections was a game changer and helped me sleep easier at night,” Monti said. “It has had a dramatic effect on the curriculum development and curation processes in our district. It not only allows users to store any artifact in one central place with easy sharing and accessibility settings, it also makes it easy for teachers, administrators, librarians, and even students to create a curated collection of artifacts to meet any specified need.” 

For more information on how Follett Software can support your district, visit Follett Software.