Lunch 'n Learn Desktop Seminars - Sign Up Now!

Make your lunch hour productive with Lunch 'n Learn Desktop Seminars. Not only will you be able to make better use of technology, but you can polish up your resume with new skills. These seminars are just one hour long, starting at 12 noon, Pacific time and are delivered via a web browser and phone line (tell me more).

Registration for each seminar closes the day before, so choose as many topics as you wish, register, and mark your calendar. These seminars are a service of @ONE, funded by the Chancellor's Office.

You'll find seminars on MySpace, blogging (given by Dan Barnett), Adobe PDF, Excel, online tutoring, PowerPoint, Photoshop, and more.

Click here for the link to register!

Important note! @ONE also offers 4-week online courses, which cost $50, but they are NOT part of our campus Blackboard training program (which pays a stipend to faculty participants). To sign up for our own Blackboard training, click here!

Blackboard Email: A 2-Minute Video Tutorial!

Here's a quick video tutorial (no audio) I prepared for students new to Blackboard. If it's helpful, please feel free to use it!

The link is here.

In addition, the University of Victoria provides some helpful pages for students on how to use the basic tools in Blackboard CE 6 (our version of Blackboard). Use with discretion; log in and other settings may not match what we do here at Butte College.

Library of Congress Photos on Flickr (Copyright Free)

The 3000 photos are available here. There are a wide variety of categories; the image above is captioned "going to town on a Saturday morning, Greene County, Georgia, 1941." You'll find baseball players, military uniforms, farm scenes, and much more. You may find a use for some of them in your class!

Blackboard Upgrade Set for Thursday, Jan. 24, From Midnight To 6 AM - Issues Resolved

The Installation of Service Pack 3 will bring Blackboard Campus Edition to version 6.2.3 and resolve several issues, including:

- support for Safari 3.x (Mac)

- fixes an issue with notification icons on the myBlackboard page

- fixes several 'Exception Error' occurrences in the Assignment tool

- fixes issues with the Student View display

Please read the following information provided by Johnson County Community College (Kansas) for details and explanations for some of the Student View issues you may have encountered recently:

Student View Tab Problems

JCCC currently has Blackboard CE (Campus Edition) 6.2.2 installed. With this version, there are problems with the Student View tab, which exist when student access to the course has yet to be enabled. By default, unless you request otherwise, all Blackboard hosted online courses are not available to students until the first day of the semester. Therefore, until student access is enabled the following “issues” exist with using the Student View tab. These problems go away when student access is enabled. Blackboard has indicated that these issues are resolved in Service Pack 3 (e.g., CE 6.2.3).

1. Despite the Release Criteria (selective release) settings for an item (e.g., Learning Module or other course element) items will show up on the Student View tab even though the selective release criteria has not yet been met.
   
2. Other schools have reported that the Group Sign up buttons do not appear (the Sign Up for Group column is not present). I do not have access to a course that uses this feature, but we assume this report is accurate since it’s been reported by several other Blackboard schools.
   
3. An “unexpected system exception error” will appear if a course has either assignments or assessments and the Assignments and Assessment tools (respectively) are selected from the Student View tab. The problem disappears when the course is made accessible to students.
   
4. Calendar entries are not visible on the Student View tab when the course is inaccessible to students. The entries do become visible once student access to the course is enabled.
   
5. In the Discussions tool, when the “Students can reply to messages but cannot post messages” setting is selected and you open a message (posted by the instructor) using the Student View tab, the Reply option (button) does not display as long as student access to the course has not been enabled. As soon as the section is open to students, the Reply option is available on both the Student View tab and when a student logs in.
   
6. An “unexpected system exception error” will appear when attempting to access the Who’s Online tool from the Student View tab if student access to the course has not yet been enabled. The problem disappears when the course is made accessible to students.
   
7. Some tools,e.g., Discussions, Chat and Announcements, display options on the Student View tab that are not visible to true students. For example, the Discussions tool displays options for creating topics and categories as well as the ability to reorder those elements. The Chat tool includes the Create Chat or Whiteboard Room button. The Announcements tool contains the Create Announcement button.

As noted, Blackboard indicates that these issues will be resolved when access to students begins, and with the installation of Service Pack 3.  We have scheduled this installation at the next available reservation on January 24 (midnight-6am).

All Blackboard Users: New Method for Creating Course Shells

An update from Chris.

Until recently, your course shell requests have been processed manually.  That is, the information you provide in the Course Shell Request form is manually transcribed into Blackboard.  As the number of Blackboard users and course sections grows, this process is increasingly time-consuming.

We have been working with Information Services staff to implement a method of creating course shells based directly on information in Datatel.  This will dramatically decrease the amount of time it takes to create course shells, and will reduce the occurrence of human error.

Because this information comes from Datatel, you may notice some slight changes in the way your sections are titled.  In most cases, all information should be correct.  However, if you have requested that multiple sections be combined into a single Blackboard course, or if you are teaching a cross-listed section, please check your course title to ensure it is correct.

You may contact me to correct any errors.

(Past sections (Winter 2008 and earlier) may appear slightly differently, as they do not conform to this new naming format.  They may be corrected at a later time.)

Beginning in Summer 2008, you will be able to use your course schedule in WebAdvisor to indicate which courses should be created in Blackboard.

Change in Blackboard Login for New Students

New Default Student Password

To improve the security of student Blackboard user accounts, we have changed the default password assigned for new users.  Please note the following change:

The default password for new student Blackboard accounts is:

six-digit birthdate (MMDDYY)

Please update any existing documentation or instructions you may provide to your students to reflect this change. 

For a copy of the new tipsheet in PDF format, which you can print out and distribute to students if you're teaching a face-to-face class, click here.

Blackboard Calendar Entries Not Appearing in Student View?

Here's why, as Chris explains.

Several instructors have noted that Calendar entries (and possibly other content) does not appear when viewed in the Student View tab.

This is a result of the intentional denial of access to courses for students until the first day of the semester.  Oddly, this denied access also affects your Student View environment.

I consider this a bug, and have reported it to Blackboard.

In the meantime, rest assured that calendar entries that appear in your Build or Teach areas will be available to students (and in Student View) at 8AM on January 22.

YouTube Tips

Here are some wonderful tips from Chris for those of you using YouTube videos in your courses!

During the recent TMI Symposium, it became apparent that many faculty have found useful video material on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) for their courses.

In the breakout session on "Blackboard and Multimedia" there was a great deal of interest in a simple trick for linking to YouTube videos without including the various excess of information on the page (comments, advertisements, etc), as well as the option to download the video to your own computer.

How do I link to a YouTube video without all the surrounding junk?

The trick is to apply a slight modification to the URL (web address) of the video.

For example:

Here is the standard YouTube address for a video on "The Story of Stuff":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqZMTY4V7Ts

If you click the link above, it will take you to a standard YouTube page, complete with the video, site navigation, links to other videos, user comments, etc.

Here is the modified version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/OqZMTY4V7Ts

Notice what's different? Click this link and you will see only the video itself, without the other unnecessary content.

To apply this fix, simply replace the "?" (question mark) and the "=" (equal sign) with a "/" (forward slash). That's it.

To add YouTube videos to your Blackboard course:

- copy the URL of the video you want

- add the URL to your Web Links tool in your Blackboard course

- edit the URL using the instructions above

- add the Web Link to a Learning Module

How do I download a YouTube video to my own computer?

I have found Zamzar (www.zamzar.com) to be a valuable resource for file conversions of all kinds. Among other things, you can convert a Word file to a PDF, for example.

To download and save a YouTube video:

- go to www.zamzar.com

- click the 'Download Videos' tab

- Step 1: paste the YouTube URL

- Step 2: choose the file format you wish (.mov and .mpg are probably the most useful)

- Step 3: enter your email address

- Step 4: click 'Convert'

Once the conversion process is complete, you will receive an email containing a link to download the finished file.

I highly encourage you to explore the other conversion options provided by Zamzar. It can be a very useful tool, free of charge!

(A link to Zamzar is also found in the 'Useful Tools' section of the Blackboard User Community)

When Do Students Have Access To Your Blackboard Course?

Here's some helpful information from Chris, our Blackboard admin.:

Some instructors prefer that students do not have access to Blackboard immediately at the beginning of the semester.

By default, students will have access to your course at 8am January 22, the first day of the semester.

(Late-starting courses are released accordingly.)

It is your responsibility to restrict access to your courses if you choose.

If you would prefer to restrict student access to your course until a later time, please follow the instructions below.

- in Build, click Manage Course

- click Settings

- click Learning Context

- change the option for Course Availability for Students to "Never Available"

When you are ready to reveal the course to students, repeat this process and choose: "Not available before section begins/after section ends"

Live Blogging: Blackboard Upgrade in Progress!

3:46 PM Tues., Jan 8, 2008

As some of you may have noticed, Blackboard has been taken offline as of 2pm Tuesday, Jan. 8.

While the upgrade was scheduled to begin at 5pm, a miscommunication regarding time zones resulted in the process beginning three hours early. The upgrade was started at 5pm EST, rather than 5pm PST.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

On the bright side, the process should be finished 3 hours ahead of schedule tomorrow morning (approx. 8am PST).

Thanks for your patience!