Information Technology Blog: Use Web Tools To Enhance The Blackboard Experience

Blackboard has a variety of great training resources available on its On Demand Learning Center to help instructors & students learn about a topic or tool in Blackboard Learning 9.1. We refer instructors & students to this site all the time to explain a topic in under 5 minutes typically. There are video tutorials & PDF documents from everything from adding a banner to your entry point to working offline with the grade center. You can find additional videos on SU's Atomic Learning site here (login with your SUNet User/Password)

A video is available to explain the utilization of web 2.0 tools in Blackboard (Bb). This video introduce web 2.0 tools, explains a few key tools, explains how to embed the, and talks about best practices in a little over 5 minutes. This is a must watch for an instructor teaching with Bb or an organization leader using Bb. Student can also benefit from watching the video because they can utilize these tools any place they have the Content Editor textbook, like in discussion boards, blogs, and wikis.

The web 2.0 tools highlighted include:

Glogster: An interactive web based poster
Prezi: Web based presentation software
Google Docs & Sites: Share working space and documents (all SU users have this)
VoiceThread: Add verbal explanation to visual media
Jing: Screenshot software to take a picture or narration of what’s on your screen.

View the video now!

In addition to the examples in the video any Web 2.0 application that provides "embed code" or has an LTI connector can be placed within Bb.

Piazza is a new kind of forum where any student in a class can ask a question, or contribute a response to a question that has been posted by someone else. Instructors and TAs are able to moderate items posted in Piazza, and may choose to answer a question themselves or endorse or correct a response that a student has posted.

Faculty: By adding a link to Piazza in your Blackboard course will allow you and your students to go directly into Piazza without an additional sign-in. Instructions for linking Piazza to your Blackboard course can be found at https://piazza.com/blackboard-easy-setup. (Please note: where the instructions refer to URL in Build Content, Shenandoah uses Web Link).

Disclaimer: while Piazza is integrated with Blackboard, it is not part of Blackboard. All Piazza support is done through Piazza directly. SU has no written contract with Piazza. Piazza Terms of Use can be found at https://piazza.com/terms.html.