Online Student Help Desk

Deanna Thompson has created a valuable resource for students at http://www.cuyamaca.edu/helpdesk/. This website provides answers to most of the questions students have about their online courses. You can link to this website from your Blackboard courses and/or your faculty website so that students know how to find it.

Site highlights include:

• Quizzes to help access your readiness for distance learning (linked with permission)
• Instructions for configuring your browser, enabling Java, Cookies and more
• Blackboard, Microsoft Office 2007 tutorials
• Links to academic priced software and discounted textbooks
• Utilities that test plug-ins and Java
• Best Practices for ensuring success in an online learning environment
• Known issues regarding Blackboard and/or compatibility problems in other programs
• And much more

Changes to Blackboard Course Copy Instructions

I changed the instructions for how to copy a Blackboard course container to include more detailed information for what selections to make as well as how to avoid some errors in the copy process. I also added information from Bb on how to copy course cartridges.

If you have printed out these instructions, please toss the old ones and use the new instructions.

IS Announcements

During the ITC meeting on Friday, IS (Information Systems) made a few announcements that will affect online teachers.

• When students drop a class their status will be changed to "unavailable" and their work will be retained, even before census day. This is to protect the work of students who are inadvertently dropped from classes. Students who drop more than 7 days before the semester begins will be removed completely from the container as if they were never there.
  
  
• Faculty will not be able to enroll anyone in their containers. This is so that WebAdvisor drives enrollment in your classes, and will prevent situations where a student is enrolled in your Blackboard course, but has never successfully enrolled through WebAdvisor. Each faculty member will have an account created for them that will be enrolled in their courses as a student so that they can view the course as a student does. This student view account will have a username something like stu.yourlastname. If you need to have guest lecturers or others enrolled in your course, you can contact IS at 619-644-7547 to request that they do this for you.

As we gain experience with the Snapshot system, we can adjust how this works in future semesters.

Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning

If you haven't explored TED yet, let this be the beginning of your journey. Richard Baraniuk gave a talk at TED explaining "the vision behind Connexions, his open-source, online education system. It cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share and modify course materials freely, anywhere in the world."

While you're at the TED site, check out a few of my favorites:

• Benjamin Zander: Classical music with shining eyes
• Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
• Philip Zimbardo: How ordinary people become monsters ... or heroes

Teaching Online Website by Tom Doyle

Tom Doyle has created a spectacular website filled with resources for teaching online at http://www.cuyamaca.edu/teachingonline/. Instructors teaching online as well as instructors just beginning to explore using online resources for their classes will find a robust resource of information that is valuable and indispensable.

Tom created this website for his sabbatical project and it has exceeded everyone's expectations. Please check it out, you'll be glad you did!

Extra Credit in Blackboard's Grade Center

There's a little gotcha in Blackboard's Grade Center when you add a column for Extra Credit. The Grade Center doesn't add columns with zero points possible into Total columns. I'll start with how to create a column for extra credit then cover how to compensate for this gotcha.

To create an extra credit column, click the Add Grade Column button in the Grade Center. Give the column a name; set the primary display to score; and enter 0 (zero) or 0.01 for the points possible (see below). Make sure "Include this column in Grade Center calculations" is set to yes.

Two possible solutions:

1. Set the points possible = 0.01
   This is the easiest solution, because now the column has more than zero points possible and will automatically be added into the Total Column. Just remember that if someone is 0.01 points away from a grade, to allow for this anomaly in the system, or you can give everyone a minimum of 0.01 points in the extra credit column.
   
   
2. Set points possible = 0 (zero)
   With this method you will have to modify the Total column to implicitly add the extra credit column(s) to all the other the columns and categories totaled.
   
   You do this by choosing Modify Column for the Total column. Then choose "Selected Grade Columns, Calculated Columns and Categories." You will have to add all the columns and/or categories you want totaled. Do not try to add an Extra Credit category for this. It still won't add any columns with zero points possible. So add each extra credit column individually.
   

Last Snapshot Workshop Today

The last Blackboard Snapshot Workshop will be held today, Friday, December 5th at 10 am in room H-134. Please come and ask any questions you have about the Snapshot process!

SafeAssign Slowdowns

There are some reports that as we get closer to the end of the semester, SafeAssign is slowing down because of increased submission of papers. If you have given your students SafeAssignments, it might be a good idea to tell them not to wait until the last minute to submit them.

Another suggestion is to not have assignments or tests due on Sunday nights. The reason is that most students will wait until the last minute to do their assignments or take their tests. However, at 10 pm on a Sunday night there is no help available if they need it. Most likely you don't want to have to answer frantic student emails on Sunday nights either.

Try making your assignments due during the day on Monday. That way the Help Desk is there to help them and you if anything goes wrong with Blackboard or the network.

Snapshot Day 1

Snapshot got off to a good start today. The biggest part of what we wanted to accomplish seems to have gone well. Section containers were created correctly and students were enrolled into those containers as they were supposed to be. If you have found any problems with that part of the process, please let me know.

Henry Eimstad sent out an email to all faculty covering the password situation. We didn't originally plan to make the change to using WebAdvisor passwords until January, but that change will be happening tomorrow (Tuesday). Hopefully, students will see the notice on the login page.

Students and faculty that are not currently accessing their Blackboard courses using their WebAdvisor login should not see their passwords change. I guess the best advice is to just try all three password variations until you find one that works -- birthdate, WebAdvisor, or the one you've been using all semester.

Let's hope the Borg don't take over the computers tonight and make up entirely new passwords!

Bb Exemplarary Course Program

Blackboard has announced:

"The 2009 Blackboard Exemplary Course Program is now open and accepting course submissions for review and applications for ECP Reviewers.

Since its launch in 2000, the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program aims to help faculty use e-Learning technology more effectively by identifying and disseminating best practices for designing engaging online courses. Using a rubric, instructors and course designers are able to evaluate how well their own course conforms to best practices for Course Design, Interaction & Collaboration, Assessment and Learner Support.

Please consider participating in the 2009 Exemplary Course Program by submitting a course of your own or volunteering to be a reviewer or both!"

To learn more about the program visit www.blackboard.com/ecp. (look at the right side of the page)

Even if you don't want to compete for this honor, their rubric for evaluating a course is quite extensive and could give you a sense of how your course compares.

Snapshot Begins Today

By the time most of you read this post on Monday morning, you should see your new Snapshot generated section containers the next time you log in to Blackboard. If you are teaching next semester and don't see your new containers, you are probably using a Blackboard login name that is different than the one WebAdvisor thinks you should use, so go to WebAdvisor and see what login it is using for you.

I'll be giving five workshops during the next two weeks on Snapshot, so please come to them with your questions. As they are needed, I will add more sessions. Check out the workshop schedule and the video if you can't attend on campus on the Snapshot Workshop page.

Is Blackboard Slow?

IS (Information Systems) is trying to get more information about reports that Blackboard is slow. So if you experience Blackboard being slow, please call IS at 619-644-7547 during workdays, or send an email to ISOPS@gcccd.edu nights or weekends. They will want to know the answers to the following questions.

Are you using a Mac or a PC?
What browser are you using? (IE 7, IE 6, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, etc.)
Were you on campus or off campus?
If off-campus, were you using dial-up, broadband, something else?
What time did you experience the slowness?
What were you doing at the time?
What did it look like or behave like?

If you get reports from students of problems, please try to gather as much of the above information as you can.

Reduce PowerPoint File Sizes

Reduce PowerPoint 2007 file sizes by changing image formats. The Compress Pictures button in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 can often reduce your .ppt files by up to 50 percent. But that can still leave you with large files, especially if your images have been created from .png files. You can save even more space by changing them to .gif or .jpg formats. (Note: The .png format is more flexible than the other file formats. Flattening to .jpg or .gif reduces flexibility.)

Here’s how to reduce file sizes:

1. Save your PowerPoint file as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which creates an .htm file and a folder of the same name. This folder will contain all the images from the presentation.
2. Open the folder, and sort it by size to reveal which files are the largest.
3. Locate the largest images in your presentation. They may have been scaled, so they might look smaller than the saved image.
4. In PowerPoint, make sure that the image isn't grouped.
5. Select the image.
6. On the Picture Tools menu, in the Adjust section, click Compress Pictures.
7. Right-click the image, and then click Save as Picture.
8. From the Save as type menu, select .jpg or .gif (if you need to use transparency effects), and then save the image.
9. Delete the original image from your presentation, and reload the saved image at its original place.
10. Regroup the images if necessary.

From MS Office Tips and Tricks

Video of Snapshot Workshop

I finished up the video of the Snapshot workshop. This is a somewhat condensed version of the workshop that I gave Friday before the ITC meeting. Hopefully this will help those of you that can't come to these workshops get the information you need. Take a look at it if you haven't already had your fill of Snapshot.

http://www.cuyamaca.edu/cc/bb/snapshot/snapshot.htm

Power of Color Workshop

From Jodi Reed:

Please share this with any GCCCD faculty/staff interested in photography or digital imaging.

Cuyamaca College is hosting The Power of Color workshop November 20-22 with The Julia Dean Photo Workshops and the Museum of Photographic Arts. This workshop, designed for anyone working with color on the computer, promises ways to work with color and harness its power for personal expression.

The Julia Dean Photo Workshops has offered a reduced rate for district faculty or staff: $335 intead of the usual $635.

Presented by:John Paul Caponigro (www.johnpaulcaponigro.com), author of Adobe Photoshop Master Class and the DVD series R/Evolution, is an internationally renowned artist. A contributing editor for Digital Photo Pro and Camera Arts and a columnist for Photoshop User and apple.com, he teaches workshops both privately in his studio and at select public venues. A member of the Photoshop Hall of Fame, a Canon Explorer of Light, and an Epson Stylus Pro, his clients include Adobe, Apple, Kodak, and X-Rite.

See http://www.juliadean.com/2008summer/powerofcolor.html for details.

If you are interested, please contact Brandon Gannon, brandon@juliadean.com The Julia Dean Photo Workshops 310-392-0909

Free Screencasting Application

This is a rare sight. . . a screencasting web application that you can caption, and the price is right, it's free! It's still in beta, and you need to sign up to get in on their beta testing, but it seems like a good idea at the moment.

Demo Girl has done a good intro to this new service on her blog at: http://demogirl.com/2008/11/13/free-screencast-application-screentoaster-may-be-my-new-best-friend/

And here's ScreenToaster's own video: http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/demo

Here's the page to sign up while it's still in Beta testing:
http://www.screentoaster.com/register?loginErr=Wrong+login+or+password&dest=DisplayHome

Here's some info from their FAQ:

What is ScreenToaster ?

• ScreenToaster is an online screencast service allowing to capture screen activity.
  * To watch videos : Just click on a video to launch the player.
  * To record videos : Click on "Start recording" or "New recording", start recording using the shortcuts.
  * When finished, add audio and subtitles, describe and tag your video so other users can easily find your screencasts.

On which platform ScreenToaster is compatible ?

• ScreenToaster is compatible with Windows Vista, Mac OS and Linux.

On which navigator may I use ScreenToaster ?

• ScreenToaster is optimized to run on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera and Safari.

Is ScreenToaster free?

• Yes it is.

Snapshot Workshop

I will be giving a Snapshot workshop today (Friday, 11/14) from 1 to 1:30pm in room I-107.

So what is Snapshot? Snapshot is the process of automatically creating Blackboard containers and enrolling students into those containers. This is great news for all of you! However, it will change the way you prepare for the semester, so you need to know what those changes are and the best strategies to deal with them. Snapshot will begin sometime between now and 11/21, so it's happening soon!

This means that everyone that uses Blackboard should come to this workshop. If you can't make it to this workshop, come to the one on December 5th, at 10am in room H134.

Hope to see you all there!

Copy table data from a web page to Excel

If you see a data table on a Web page and you want to import it into Microsoft Office Excel:

1. Copy the URL (address) of the page.
2. In Excel, on the Data tab, in the Get External Data section, click From Web.
3. In the New Web Query dialog box, paste the URL into the Address box.
4. Select the table that contains the data you want to work with, and then click Import.
5. In the Import Data dialog box, indicate where you want the data to appear, and then click OK.

From Microsoft Tips & Tricks

Patience Pays

If you're thinking of buying software through the District Work At Home agreement, wait until November 1. The price is going down to $19.99 each for Microsoft Office 2007 and SharePoint Designer 2007. The price until November 1 is $29.99. Keep an eye on the Southland website for details.

SafeAssign InstanceNotFound Error Temporary Fix

There are reports that the InstanceNotFound error from SafeAssign has been happening primarily in FireFox 3 (FF 3) on the PC and Safari for the Mac. The problem appears to be that SafeAssign is trying to write a cookie to the student's computer and if the browser is set to not allow cookies, the error is triggered. We are working to get a more permanent solution in place, but in the meantime, here are the temporary fixes.

Enable cookies for FF 3 on PC

1. Select Options from the Tools Menu in FF 3
2. Click on the Privacy Option
3. Click on the Exceptions... button next to "Accept cookies from sites"
4. Type safeassign.blackboard.com in the "Address of web site:" field
5. Click Allow
6. Click Close, then OK to exit the Options window

To enable cookies for Safari

1. Choose Preferences from the Safari menu (Edit Menu then Prefences on PC)
2. Click on Security
3. Choose Accept Cookies "Only from sites you navigate to"
4. If you still get the error after choosing that, try to temporarily change the setting to Accept Cookies "Always"

This situation points out the value of telling your students that if you try something in one browser and it doesn't work, just try to use a different browser. This is probably the easiest solution.

SafeAssign Known Error

The recent upgrade to SafeAssign seems to have introduced a new problem. Sometimes, but not always, when a student tries to submit a SafeAssignment, they get this error message:

Error Submitting SafeAssignment
Submission error: InstanceNotFound.

This problem has been reported to Blackboard and we hope for a fix soon.

One more step in SafeAssign Upgrade

Last weekend, Blackboard upgraded SafeAssign so that it could read Word 2007 documents.  However, there is one more step you need to take in your courses to make SafeAssign work if you want to use it.  

Go to the Control Panel and click on SafeAssign.  Then click on the Synchronize this course link.  The page will change quickly to another page, then back to where it was.  That's all you need to do.

Please view this video

I was bitten by the email bug again. I put a really cool (IMHO) video on the blog yesterday, but those of you who subscribed by email didn't get to see it. This picture is a screen capture of the beginning of the video.

So please, go to http://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20080927222629787 and watch the video. I promise, you'll like it. If you don't, just come to my office and I'll give you a piece of candy!

Once you've watched the video, you'll know why it's important to come to my Blackboard workshop, this Friday, 10/3, at 10am in room H-134. I hope to see you there!

Blackboard Workshop Sneak Preview

I will be giving a Blackboard workshop this Friday, October 3rd, from 10 am to Noon in room H-134. This workshop will begin with important information regarding changes in how course containers are built and how students are enrolled in those containers beginning with the Spring '09 Semester. Here is a sneak preview:




I expect this portion of the workshop to last about 30 minutes, so if you can only come for a short time, please come for that. I won't make you stay for the whole thing!

The next topic will be the Blackboard Grade Center, followed by about 30 minutes for questions and answers about anything in Blackboard. More information about this and other workshops can be found at http://www.cuyamaca.edu/tlc/workshops/default.asp.

I hope to see you there!

Poll Display

If you receive email updates to this blog, you didn't get to see how the PollDaddy.com poll really looks when it is seen as an embedded web page element instead of just a URL. Here is the picture of how the poll looks on the blog page:



And this is how it looked in the email sent to email subscribers last night:

That is quite a difference. So lesson learned. If you really want the poll to look good, it needs to be embedded into a web page.

Got Polls?

With a free account from PollDaddy.com you can create surveys and polls to post to your website, blog and social network profiles. Just don't try to put them into Blackboard, it won't work there. Instead, PollDaddy provides a "Direct Link Method" which gives you a URL to link to from Blackboard or an email.

Example Poll:

Blackboard SafeAssign Downtime Saturday 9/27/08

Blackboard sent out the following announcement:

"Please note that Blackboard SafeAssign TM will be unavailable
while undergoing maintenance on Saturday, September 27. This
maintenance window is part of an update which will include the
following improvements:

- Support for Microsoft Office 2007 (.docx) and OpenOffice (.odt) wordprocessing documents

- Support for use of SafeAssign in Blackboard Community System TM Organizations

- Stability enhancements

- Bug fixes "

Please note that this effects only the SafeAssign tool in Blackboard. All other aspects of Blackboard should function normally on September 27. If you are using SafeAssign for your courses, please notify your students that they will not be able to submit SafeAssignments that day.

Free Engineering Courses Online by Stanford

Stanford's School of Engineering has created "Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE)" which will offer several of this top rated University's Engineering program classes at no charge to students and educators. I don't know about you, but I plan on signing up! I always wanted to go to Stanford.

From their website, "Stanford encourages fellow educators to use Stanford Engineering course materials in their own classrooms. A Creative Commons license allows for free and open use, reuse, adaptation and redistribution of Stanford Engineering Everywhere material."

Initial Course Offerings

Introduction to Computer Science
Programming Methodology
Programming Abstractions
Programming Paradigms

Artificial Intelligence
Introduction to Robotics
Natural Language Processing
Machine Learning

Linear Systems and Optimization
The Fourier Transform and its Applications
Introduction to Linear Dynamical Systems
Convex Optimization I
Convex Optimization II

Is this image copied from the web?

If you've given your students an assignment that involves images, how do you know if they created it themselves, or if they copied it from the web? Now there's a way to find out.

TinEye.com is search engine with this purpose in mind. Give it an image, and it will tell you where else that image is on the web, and sometimes, where the original image came from.

Ars Technica has given a thorough review of TinEye that is worth the read.

I tried finding the source of the Einstein picture I use for my Teaching with Blackboard course so I could credit it, but couldn't track it down from the 838 matches TinEye found of it.

Convert a Word document to a Blackboard Test

BYU Idaho has created a tool that allows you to copy and paste a properly formatted Word document into their program. Their program then generates a text file that can be uploaded into the Blackboard Pool Manager. Thanks BYU Idaho!

http://www.byui.edu/onlinelearning/employees/testgen/index.htm

Set Up Meetings or Project Sign-ups

Have you ever been frustrated with the process of trying to find a time when several people can meet? Now setting up meetings are easy with Doodle.ch. For a change, this website doesn't force you to sign up. All you do list the dates and times when you want the event to occur and Doodle.ch will give you a link to send to everyone you want to attend. As each person visits the site and checks off which times they are available, you can see what times are workable.

You can also use this tool to have students sign up for project presentations. Be sure to check out the "PowerDoodle" button for more options. You can set it up so that a person can only select one time, hide everyone's choices and make it time zone sensitive for your out of state students.

The second function on this site is "Make a Choice." You can use this for your classes to have students choose which of a list of projects they want to sign up for. It might also work for having students sign up for groups, or to manage large projects where many people contribute different parts of the project. If you can think of other uses, please post them in the comments.

Improve the quality of YouTube Videos

This tip comes from Lisa Chaddock (Geography). Thanks Lisa!

Many faculty are using YouTube videos to enhance their instruction. You can add the following string of characters to the end of any YouTube url and get the higher definition version if it is available: &fmt=18

It works on many videos if they were originally uploaded in higher quality.

For example:

Compare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7tJ5GfXksI
with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7tJ5GfXksI&fmt=18

In the second video you can see much more detail in the floor and wood, as well as the robot. This trick doesn't always work (the key is that the video was uploaded in a higher quality originally), but when it does work, it can improve the quality of the YouTube videos you use to enhance instruction.

An alternative to get higher quality video for your classes is to post your video to Vimeo.

Compare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9z5YxkCZCk&fmt=18
with: http://www.vimeo.com/1620070

For this to work, you need to either record your own video, or find applicable video that is already available in Vimeo.

Subscribe to this blog

I just added a service called FeedBurner to this blog. Now you can get the latest information from this blog right in your email inbox, or if you prefer, through your RSS feed reader. The email subscription service is set to check once a day for any new posts on this blog at about 1 am. If there are new posts, it will send you those posts in an email message. If there are no new posts, it won't send you anything that day. That way even if I get carried away with posting to this blog, you won't get more than one email per day. Don't worry though, under normal circumstances, I plan to post only about once or twice a week.

Another Browser Hint

In the interest of equal time and browser war fairness (have I been watching too much of the political convention?), today I have an IE problem challenge to report.

Symptom: You're making changes in Blackboard, but the changes don't show up right away. But then out of nowhere, they show up 10 minutes later. So for instance, you give a grade to a student in the Grade Center, but poof... it disappears, then magically shows up later.

Solution: This seems to happen most in IE (Internet Explorer). So please all double-check that you have your IE set as follows.

• From the Tools menu, select Internet Options.
• Locate the Browsing History section and click the Settings button.
• Select the option to “Check for newer versions of stored pages: Every time I visit the webpage.”
• Click OK twice to exit.

Blackboard vs Firefox 3

Firefox 3 is not fully supported by Blackboard at this time. You may receive reports from students that when they turn in an assignment they get an error message. You can suggest that your students use Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2 instead. In fact, that's a good suggestion whenever a student has problems with an assignment or test, to tell them to try using a different browser. Each browser has its little quirks and even though Blackboard tries very hard to work around those, sometimes it's just easier to try a different browser.

Here's Blackboard's browser information page. Choose the "Vista 8.0 and Campus Edition 8.0" option.

Help for students logging in to Blackboard

Here is a web page that you can link to for your students to help them log in to Blackboard. This page will be updated if anything changes and will always have the same address, so you can depend on it being there when your students need it.

http://www.cuyamaca.edu/tlc/bb/docs/blackboard_login.asp

TimeDriver

TimeDriver is a web-based tool you can use to let students sign up for time slots in your office hours, or let students pick a time to present their projects. TimeDriver has a video that shows how it works.

You create blocks of time that are available to be scheduled. For example, your office hours are every Monday and Wednesday from 2 - 3 pm. TimeDriver will create a link you can post in Blackboard or on your website, or email to your students. When the student clicks on that link they can sign up for one of the available time slots. If you link it to your Outlook or Google calendar, it will update your calendar as well.

I've set up a TimeDriver for myself. Now you can make appointments to see me without having to hassle with emails and phone calls. Just go to http://my.timedriver.com/XF7FK and give it a try.

Creating Banners for Blackboard

I often get asked "How do I make a banner for my Blackboard course?"

I've been trying to find some resources to help you with that, and here's what I've come up with so far.

Create a banner with PowerPoint 2007 - this is a video of the steps you need to take to create a banner in PowerPoint.

http://cooltext.com/ - you choose one of the starting point designs seen below, then modify the settings to suit your needs. Creates text with background, no imported images allowed.

http://makefreebanners.com/ - this site gives you a choice of 150 background images to which you add your own text.

Gucci Update

We just heard from Henry Eimstad that "Gucci" (the process by which Blackboard and Colleague will talk to each other so that you don't have to request containers and roster uploads every semester) is not going to be working in time to implement it for this semester. Information Systems (IS) will manually create containers and upload rosters for the beginning of the Fall 08 semester.

Rosters are being uploaded now in the order the Upload Request forms were received. According to the Upload Schedule, these upload requests should have been submitted by August 15th. Upload requests submitted by August 15th will likely be completed before Monday morning. Upload requests submitted after August 15th will be done as soon as possible, but it is unrealistic to expect them to be loaded by Monday.

There is hope that "Gucci" will be working for classes that begin later in the semester. I'll keep you posted as I receive more information.

Screencasting: How To Start, Tools and Guidelines

This is an excellent article on screencasting, written by Adam Hay for Smashing Magazine. Screencasting is the process of recording your computer screen and usually includes narration that describes what you are doing on the computer.

Mathway - Math Problem Solver

This article from CNET News talks about a new web service called Mathway.

Mathway is a Web calculator that not only solves math problems for you, but also shows you how it got to the answer with step-by-step directions. It's the kind of service that would have utterly ruined me in middle school if I had wanted to cruise through the stacks of homework without doing any of the actual computations.

Are there any Math teachers out there that want to comment on what this may mean for your students or classes?

Write on Your Screen

Another free program from Microsoft that will be a big help in your face-to-face classes is called ZoomIt. This program lets you zoom in on your computer screen and annotate it. Be sure to read the fine print on this page for instructions on how to use the tool. It will be easier to read once you have ZoomIt installed!

If you install this in a classroom, leave the default keyboard shortcuts as they are unless they interfere with something you teach. This way other teachers who know how to use the program can use it without having to learn new keys.

Here's a little Cheat Sheet for using it.

Resize Images

Before you post images to Blackboard or your website, it's a good idea to resize them first. Most cameras take pictures at a resolution that is higher than what is needed for the web. This can result in file and image sizes that are unnecessarily large, making it difficult for students with slower connections to view your resources.

Microsoft has a free tool for Windows XP users to resize pictures.

Online Orientation Extraordinaire

Check out what Florida Community College at Jacksonville put together for a student online orientation: http://www.markbasse.com/redcar/index.html

Pretty impressive, huh?

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Bob Dylan

That song just popped into my head as I was thinking about how to tell you about all the changes coming down the pike for how we work with Blackboard.

Henry Eimstead and Brian Nath held a meeting at the district today about how Blackboard and Colleague will talk to each other so that you don't have to request containers and roster uploads every semester.

This process which Brian calls "Gucci" will automatically create Blackboard containers for every section that is listed in Colleague. It will also add students to these containers automatically.

Key points:

1. All of this may or may not happen for the Fall 2008 semester. If all goes well, this will happen by August 20. If not, we simply fall back to the way things have always been done.
   
2. For now, faculty should request all roster uploads and create container requests using the forms on GCCCD Online just as they normally would. These forms should be submitted by August 15.
   
3. All the following items will happen only IF "Gucci" happens by August 20.
   
4. All containers will be initially created with CONTROL PANEL > SETTINGS > COURSE AVAILABILITY set to No. This is so that the instructor has control over when the container is ready to be viewed by students. When you're ready for students to see your course, set this to Yes.
   
5. All containers will be built using a template. Each college can set their own template. This template sets things like the default items in the course menu, how the menu looks, and any content we want to be in every course. Chris and I got some good templates from the onsite Blackboard training we had in May, so we're going to start with something basic until we can confer with faculty on what works best. We can always change it to meet faculty's needs.
   
6. Course containers that have already been requested and built by faculty will be automatically transferred to the "Gucci" generated containers. It's magic, what can I say?
   
7. The section owns the content. What this means is that if Kari Wergeland was in Colleague to teach section 4633 LIR-110 in the Fall, then for any reason was unable to teach the section and section 4633 was reassigned to Jeri Resto to teach it, then Kari Wergeland would be removed as the instructor of the container and Jeri Resto would be the new instructor for that container. All content that Kari had created prior to being removed as the instructor would be intact in the container that Jeri Resto is now teaching with. We were told by the Blackboard consultants that this is just how Blackboard works. There's no changing it.
   
8. So that brings us to the next key point. With this new system it's a good idea to have a development container. That is, a container in which you create your course, and keep updated, which you then copy to the new container that is created for you each semester by "Gucci." When requesting these development containers using the GCCCD Online site, please use the following information to fill out the form.
   
   Example for a container used to develop courses:
   • College: Cuyamaca
   • Semester: Fall 2008
   • Section: 0000
   • Course: ENGL
   • Number: 110
   • Description: College Composition
   • Special Instructions: this container is for development purposes
   
   Instructors will be able to change the Course Name after the container is created if they choose.
   
9. Merging of sections. By Spring 09 semester there will be a tool called the "Course Merge Tool" that instructors can use to merge several sections into one container. With this tool, rosters will still be automatically updated.
   
   For Fall 08, the alternative is to merge them manually in which case, only one of the sections will get rosters automatically updated. Or, you can try to get by for one semester with separate sections.
   
   Classes which are "Cross-listed and Equal" such as ACCT 101 and MATH 101, taught in the same room, at the same time with the same teacher will be automatically merged starting this Fall. This does not include BOT-101A and BOT-101B. I'm not clear on the details why, but that's what they said. Updated 8/11/08 - a single container will be created for every section listed in Colleague. Merging will be as described in the above paragraph. In other words, faculty can combine sections, but they will only get on-going add-drop updates for the section that other sections are being combined into.

Whew. I think that's all of it. There was a lot covered and still a lot that is unknown, but progress is definitely being made!

Submitting an Assignment

Today I finished up the video on Submitting an Assignment. This video can be used by any instructor to show their students how to submit an assignment. Just link to the video from within your Blackboard course.

Creating an Assignment

I made a Captivate movie today to show how to create an assignment in Blackboard. The movie is posted to the Faculty Resources page under Build Your Course, or you can link directly to it. I'll be following that up in the next couple of days with a video on how students submit an assignment and then how to grade an assignment.

I like working in Captivate because it allows me to start off by just clicking on all the spots I need to click on, then I can add notes that I will use record to add narration later. These notes can then be used to create the closed captioning. It's a work flow that works for me and the way I like to work. I love using Camtasia for recording quick instructions, where I don't need to worry much about stumbling over my words now and then, or about adding closed captioning. Ultimately, both products are good and I'm glad I have both available to create videos for our campus.

Welcome!

Welcome to the "Cuyamaca College Online" blog. The reason I'm starting this blog is that there is so much information I want to share with faculty at Cuyamaca College, but there is no way for me to communicate it to you all other than to stuff your already full email boxes.



What prompted me to start this blog today was a series of videos produced by Blackboard for their recent conference to begin talking about "Blackboard NG" (NG = Next Generation, or what the they're planning for the next version).

Please use the comments to say what you think of "NG." Are you thinking "Yay, less clicking!" or "Oh no, not something else new to learn!" or something in between?