Work with others the easy way with Office Live Workspace

It’s easy—and it’s FREE.

Recently, Jodi Reed, Brian Josephson, and I worked together on a PowerPoint presentation for a Professional Development Week workshop. We had to email the PowerPoint file back and forth to each other as we made changes. A few times we had trouble figuring out which version of the file had all the changes.

I wish I had known about Office Live! We could have each worked on the PowerPoint file whenever we needed to without sending files back and forth to each other through email. If we had used Office Live, we could have shared just one file, with each of us able to modify that file from home or work, whenever and wherever it was most convenient for us.

Goodbye attachments. Hello sharing.

Office Live is the online extension of Microsoft Office, to store documents on the web, access them from virtually anywhere, and share them with others.

When you have multiple people involved in a project or planning an event, Office Live Workspace makes it easy. You can share documents, coordinate schedules, and manage to-do lists in your own password-protected online workspace.

There are several videos that tell you all about the features. More information is available and you can sign up for your own Office Live workspace whenever you like.

How to reach Blackboard when the CC website is down

Although it is rare that the Cuyamaca College website is down, it's always good to have a backup plan. Since Blackboard is now hosted off-site, you can reach it directly by going to http://gcccd.blackboard.com/.

Of course, by the time most of you read this our website will be up and running again, fixed by our great IS staff. You might want to tuck this information away for another day, or post it to your courses so your students can reach Blackboard when this happens.

Student View and Hiding Grades

Student View

As you set your Blackboard containers to be available for the Spring Semester, this is a good time to make sure that everything works the way you think it will for your students. Every instructor has a student account created for them with the format stu_yourFirstName.yourLastName. You can log in using this username with the standard 6-digit birthdate. Be sure to change that password as soon as possible (see http://tinyurl.com/c6rgrw for instructions).

Hiding Grades in My Grades

Please check how My Grades looks to your students. One of the most frequent questions I get is, "I hid the column in the Grade Center, but the students can still see it. How do I fix that?"

When you hide columns in the Grade Center, you only hide them from yourself. To show them again, go to Manage > Organize Grade Center. Select the column you want to show and in the Show/Hide menu, choose Show Selected Columns. Don't forget to hit submit once you're finished.

Now that you can see the columns again, click the chevron in the heading of the column you want to hide from students, and choose Modify Column from the menu. In the Options section, select "No" for "Show this column in My Grades" and Submit.

I hope you all have a great start to the semester!!

Entering Grades Causes Spinning "Saving..." Icon

Instructors using the Blackboard Grade Center could experience an unusual bug when entering grades that could cause the spinning "Saving..." icon to display indefinitely. Any scores that you were recording when this problem occurred will not be properly recorded in the Grade Center and will need to be reentered. This problem happens when your web browser may continue using an older version of the Grade Center code from your browser's cache instead of the newer, updated version that exists on the Blackboard server.

To fix this problem, simply clear your browser's cache using the appropriate set of instructions below. This will force your browser to download the most up-to-date version of the Grade Center from the Blackboard server. In addition to fixing this specific problem, you should periodically clear the cache to allow your browser to function more efficiently.

Internet Explorer 7

1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select Internet Options.
2. Make sure the General tab is selected
3. Under "Browsing History" click "Delete"
4. In the new window, click Delete Files in the Temporary Internet Files section.

Internet Explorer 6

1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select Internet Options.
2. Make sure the General tab is selected.
3. Click Delete Files in the Temporary Internet Files section.

Firefox

1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select Clear Private Data
2. Make sure that "Cache" is checked.
3. Click Clear Private Data Now.

Safari

1. Once your browser is open, click the Safari menu and select Empty Cache
2. Confirm the action by clicking Empty in the pop-up window

Force Completion... Huh... Yeah... What is it good for?

Absolutely Nothing

Seriously though, what legitimate reason would an instructor have for using Force Completion on an exam? Why does this setting exist?

Some things it DOESN'T do:
- Doesn't enforce time limits
- Doesn't submit the exam when time limit is up
- Doesn't prevent students from opening other browser windows, or other browsers
- Doesn't prevent using IM clients or other collaboration tools
- Doesn't prevent using their textbook

What it DOES do is make life difficult for students who for whatever reason, lose their connection in the middle of a test. This forces them to ask the instructor to let them access it again.

There is one argument in favor of this setting, which is that it prevents students stopping in the middle of a test and looking up the answers. However, this setting doesn't prevent them from just opening another browser or their text and looking up the answer. A better setting to use is to make your tests timed, so that there is a limit to how much looking up they can do. This timer keeps running even if the browser is closed, so if the student loses their connection and gets back in, they lose the amount of time it took to do so.

If you currently use the "Force Completion" setting on your tests, please reconsider and just say no!

For those that remember the Edwin Starr song that inspired the title of this post (War... huh... yeah... what is it good for... absolutely nothing... ), here's a YouTube video of it:

Fall '08 Class cleanup

Before we all move on and forget the Fall semester, make sure you set your Fall containers to be unavailable.

Do this in the Control Panel by clicking Settings, then Course Availability. Set Fall containers to "No."

Rent a Textbook

Chegg allows students to "rent" textbooks for significantly less than buying them new, and in many cases, for less than buying them used. On top of that, they donate a tree for every book they buy, rent, or sell. There are no monthly subscription fees or hidden charges. Each textbook has a specific rental fee, which is dependent on the ISBN. Shipping and handling are dependent on the shipment method chosen.

Urgent: Modify your personal settings in Blackboard

Jodi Reed made a good suggestion in her comment on one of my previous posts that is prompting me to make this post. While you're changing your password, you also need to check your email address and make it visible to students.

I can't repeat enough that as instructors, it is critical that you change your password in Blackboard. It is just too easy for students to find your birthdate on the web. You cannot risk having them compromise your course by not changing your password.

Change your password:

1. Log in to Blackboard
2. click the Personal Information link in the Tools section
3. Click Change Password
4. Choose a new password - I suggest you use your WebAdvisor password so you don't have to remember two different passwords
5. Click Submit

Check your email address and phone number:

1. On the Personal Information page, click Edit Personal Information
2. Verify and change if needed your email address
3. Verify and change if needed your phone number and website address
4. If you needed to change this information, make yourself a note to change it in WebAdvisor too, because that's where Blackboard gets its information.
5. Click Submit

Make your email address and/or phone number visible to students:

1. On the Personal Information page, click Set Privacy Options
2. If you want students to be able to see your email address or phone number, check it it section 1.
3. If you want to be listed in the Blackboard User Directory, you can check that item.
4. Click Submit

System Status

I added a new section to my blog that will report the system status for Blackboard and the campus internet/website to the best of my knowledge. I'm doing this so that you all will have a place to check to see if there are any known issues. Notices like the ones that are there today will only be kept there for one day after they are resolved.

If Blackboard is down, and you don't see a notice in the System Status, please report it to IS at 619-644-7547.

Please bookmark my blog at http://cuyamaca-online.blogspot.com/ so you have it handy when things go wrong and you're wondering if you're the only one that knows it!

Where are my Spring containers?

This question is coming up a lot these days. If you log into Blackboard and you don't see the containers for the Spring semester, you are probably logging in to Blackboard with a username that is different than the User ID that WebAdvisor uses for you. Since containers are created by the data in WebAdvisor starting this semester, you will have to log in to Blackboard with your WebAdvisor User ID for the Bb Username. The first time you log in to Blackboard with this username, your password will be your 6-digit birth date (mmddyy).

The first thing you will need to do is change your Blackboard password. Just to keep things simple, change your Bb password to match your WebAdvisor password, then you don't have to think about which password to use for each program. On the Welcome tab, click Personal Information in the green Tools section. Then choose Change Password and follow the instructions from there.

You should now see your Spring semester containers listed in "My Courses." This confirms that the reason you weren't seeing your containers was that the system thought you should be using a different username.

So now you have a problem. You can't copy any of the classes from your old username to this new username. The solution is to log back in using your old Blackboard username. Then enroll your new WebAdvisor/Blackboard username into your old classes as an instructor.

Here are the steps to enroll yourself as an instructor:

1. Log in to Bb with the old username.
2. Go into the course you want to copy.
   
3. Control Panel > Enroll User > click Username radio button > type your new username in the search box > click the search button.
4. Put a check mark in the Add column next to the entry with the username that matches your WebAdvisor User ID.
5. Click Submit and OK.
6. Now you need to modify the rights for your WebAdvisor Username by clicking List/Modify Users in the Control Panel.
7. Either list all or search to find the entry with the username that matches your WebAdvisor User ID.
   
8. Click the Properties button next to that entry.
9. Scroll down to section 4, and click the Instructor radio button.
10. Click Submit and OK.

It would be best if you did these steps for all the classes that use your old username. That way, from then on, you only have to log in to Blackboard using the new WebAdvisor/Blackboard username.