Collections in Microsoft Edge is an incredibly useful and resourceful tool for students, teachers and, well, people. Welcome to Day 113 of 365 Ideas for Microsoft 365.
Like Google Chrome, you can log into the Microsoft Edge browser, and there are some really nice benefits to doing so. Your bookmarks and extensions travel from one device to another with you when you log in. I wrote last month about some of the best of Google Chrome features that are in Edge as well as some of the only in Edge features like the Immersive Reader accessibility tools. But Collections deserve an article of their own.
Starting Collections
In the top right corner of Edge, right next to your avatar, is the Collections icon.
Click on it to open a sidebar where all the collections you have created while logged into Edge are saved. It’s really easy to save websites to a collection. Simply scroll down to the collection you want to add to, (if you have as many as I do and need to scroll down.) Click on the collection and the items you have already saved there appear, each in a small card with a thumbnail image and a title. Just click Add current page to add the current page.
Of course you can also choose Start new collection to start a new collection. Seeing a theme here? Everything is really well labelled, making Collections really easy to use. Websites aren’t the only thing you can collect. You can also click and drag over text, then drag the text to the sidebar. Or just click and drag an image over to save it. IN both cases you can still click on the card to open the web page they came from. But clicking and dragging the pertinent text from the site is far more useful for students collecting research.
Using Collections for Research
But the student research applications don’t end with the collecting of materials. You can also send the contents of a collection to Excel, Microsoft Word or OneNote. Websites will appear as the title of the website as a hyperlink. Images and text will be copied to Word or OneNote along with a References section. There’s also a Notes feature that will look very familiar to Microsoft Whiteboard users.
Collections is far more sophisticated than mere bookmarks in your browser. They are equally as portable- what I add to a collection on my Surface Book is there when I log into my Surface Pro or my work laptop. (Unfortunately I can’t get to my Collections on the district’s Chromebook, because, well, they only run Chrome. Just one more example of the vast amount of usefulness and function we will pay for years to save (very) few bucks up front.)
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If you like this style of directions and screenshots, walking you through ideas for using Microsoft tools in your classroom, check out my book,
All the Microsoft Tools You Need to Transform Your Classroom: 50 Ideas for using Microsoft Office 365 for Education available on amazon in both Kindle and paperback.