Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from February, 2010

Blackboard 9 Training: Blog, Journal, and Evaluation

The Blog, Journal, and Evaluation features are huge upgrades to Blackboard that I hope most of us will find beneficial. The Blog tutorial can be found here: http://www.blackboard.com/quicktutorials/Bb9_Tools_Create_Blog.htm The Journal tutorial can be viewed here: http://web.cocc.edu/acs/Bb9/Bb9_Journal_How_To/Bb9_Journal_How_To.html Blackboard 9 Evaluation Training: http://ksdl.ksbe.edu/bb9/evaluation/BBTraining_Eval.html Take some time to think about the following questions while viewing these tutorials: Although grade reporting is customizable, it's still not perfect. Do we want to direct parents and students to the grade book now that it will reflect accurate grades? Or should we send them individually after PDFing separate files? Are there any features we need to activate for all courses in IH, AM, or AK? For example tracking, early warning, ect.? If so, what are the parameters we should consider? The Blog and Journal features are not directly connected to the gra

School 2.0 Technology and Future of School

Timothy Magner Director, Office of Education Technology US Department of Education There is a large paradigm shift in education today and how countries value education. Below are some of the charts that represent the comparison of other countries in relation to the student participation in secondary education. This is also a representation of the competition that will be challenged to students from the United States in comparision to other countries. A change in the demand for skills has evolved over the past three decades. The task distribution has shown that there is a much higer demand for trades rather than positions in customer service. Technology has drastically change. In 1946 there were thousands of phone booths, but in the 21st century there are numerous indivudals who have a cell phone. This has created a society of communication. This has represented in changing the ways we communicate with people in various ways we interact: voice, picture, text, play games, etc. Home media

Acrobat Preflight

Today's Adobe Acrobat webinar was on streamlining and avoiding problems BEFORE printing and distributing your pdf documents. In the Tools menu there is an option called "Preflight". Here you can not only check your document for a LARGE number of specific problems, but also fix them on the fly. It's like creating a correction macro. You can save these fixes as profiles for later use, or create specific "droplets" onto which you drop files for correction. With preflight checks and fixes you can.. check for blank pages which may really be blank, or may be pages with "invisible text objects" that weren't OCR'd (converted to text), and therefore appeared as unsearchable images find duplicates of images and discard all but one for reuse, thus saving space find, then optimize images or convert images to grayscale or a specific color space find, then place images or text strings on separate layers inventory all of the fonts and characters and

Build a Tribe in 6 Easy Steps

Rethinking online course marketing...something that's been on our minds for awhile now is how to capture our learners, engage them and leave them wanting more. I don't know how many of us get the Learning Solutions Magazine but I wanted to share the article. Here are a few points that I picked up on: Don't sell - be a matchmaker. Provide risk-free mini course How do you create a tribe? Be the best in the world at what you do. Give tons of value. Tell the truth to your students. If you’re trying to sell them something, tell them. People react better online to honesty than to traditional marketing tactics. Always deliver what you say. Broken promises are one of the fastest ways to lose a customer. Give your loyal customers a reason to love you. It might be a bonus course or discounts that no one else gets. Remember that word of mouth is still the best marketing in the world. You might want to set up a referral program to promote this. Talk to your customers and ask them

Best of Bb World - Calcasieu's Top 10

List of top 10 tools for Blackboard success: #10 - Skype - using for virtual mtgs, ePals (cross schools, internationally), tech help #9 - StudyMate #8 - Bb Help for teachers - added as a tab in Bb - contains handouts #7 - Podcast - student interviews, substitute lessons, differentiated instruction #6 - Camtasia - using it for tutorials, demonstrations, student presentations. Provide teachers software when they attend the PD training. #5 - Blog - most teachers are using the Blog over the discussion board in Bb, like the view. Teachers can export to show content to parents. Teachers can enroll in a two week course to learn about this tool. #4 - Teams LX - Wiki's for projects, literature circles - like the tool because of the assessment portion (drill down to individual students - who did what, "playback" feature to see all changes and versions of the document) #3 - Web sites using Bb community system - close to 2,000 teachers using it as a class Web site tool #2 - Bb Men

The Google Webinar

So, before I went to my training today I typed up a whole thing of my webinar on Google and saved it as a draft. Well, low and behold it disapeared. No where to be found. So, I have attached my PDF document of the presentation for you to view. There are over 50+ Google tools out there. it just depends on how you are going to use them. Many I have known about, but some I didn't. Enjoy! The Google Webinar

Professional Development Strategies to Create 21st Century Teachers

Presenter: Jonathon Blissenbach, Director of Product Management for Atomic Learning, Inc. 21st Century Skills: What are they? - What students need to be successful and employable in the workforce. Myths... (these items do not make up what "21st century skills" are. 21st century skills = technology skills Using Web 2.0 tools = a "21st century teacher" A technology rich environment ensures 21st century skills 21st century skills reduce time spent on core subjects ISTE Educdational Technology Standards for Teachers Student Learning & Creativity Digital-Age Learning Experiences & Assessments Digital-Age Work & Learning Digital Citizenship & Responsibility Professional Growth & Leadership - lifelong learning Atomic Learning's 21st Century Themes and Concepts 21st Century Themes Global Awarenes Financial & Economic Literacy Civic Literacy Health Literacy 21st Century Concepts Creativity & Innovation Comunication & Collaboration Research

GoogleApps Education K-12 Webinar

Featuring: Clarkston Central School District 9500 students, 815 teachers In 2008, they were looking for solutions (LMS) that put students at the center, something that was flexible and would grow with the school district. They developed two separate domains one for staff and one for students. Staff is authenticated through single sign on (active directory). The staff site allows teachers to easily and securely share items for collaboration (i.e. lesson plans). Both sites use docs, sites and calendars. Staff has video and students will have gmail accounts. Calendar - Started with the calendar tool for teachers because they are comfortable with that, least intimidating. School district (e.g. Math) calendar items can be easily added (subscription) to teachers personal calendar. Using Calendar as a curriculum mapping tool to add details to yearly plan with links to additional resources. Google Docs - 10 people simultaneously collaborating, spreadsheets 50 people. Use template model

Bb 9 - Course Interface Training

Here is the recording for the training on the course interface. Please ignore some of the fumbling around :). http://elearn.ksbe.edu/p92777764/ I also thought it would be good to mention where you can control the views you allow students to have (folder and/or list) although we probably don't mind if students have access to both. 1. Control Panel - Customization - Style 2. Under Course Menu Display - you can choose what you want the default view to be and check or uncheck the box permitting students to control their view. I also left out my resources (ha, ha). So here are the links to additional tutorials I found about the course interface: Quick Start Guide to Bb 9,University of West England http://info.uwe.ac.uk/online/blackboard/staff/guides/quick-start.asp Blackboard 9 Course Menu Quick Tip, Office of Academic Technology Spring Arbor University http://sites.arbor.edu/oat/2009/08/13/blackboard-9-course-menu-quick-tip/ Blackboard Instructor How-To Movies,University of Southe