Category Archives: How to…

Turnitin2 Webinar

Posted on October 12, 2010 by | Comments Off

originality_sm-2010-10-12-20-58.pnggrademark_sm-2010-10-12-20-58.pngpeermark_sm-2010-10-12-20-58.png

On Tuesday, October 12th Instructional Support presented a webinar for COCE instructors on the new features of Turnitin2. Thank you to COCE Faculty Development for scheduling this with us and thank you to all who attended!

For those of you who could not make it or were unaware, you can view the recording of the session. Turnitin2 now includes a slightly revised plagiarism prevention tool called OriginalityCheck and bundles two products previously sold separately. These are GradeMark and PeerMark. GradeMark significantly enhances your grading options and PeerMark is a robust tool for peer review assignments.

If you have questions after reviewing the recorded webinar or would like to schedule training for yourself or your department, please contact one of the Instructional Support staff.

 

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Walk- In Training Available – Fall 2010 Free Periods

Posted on September 13, 2010 by | Comments Off

Starting Tuesday, September 14th Instructional Support staff are available for training during free periods.

Linda, Lauren, and Aaron are always available to schedule training or consultations to meet your scheduling needs but in addition we will be offering walk-in support during free periods for the duration of the fall semester. Please see the free period options below.

Starting September 14th through the fall semester:

Topic:
 When:
 Where:
 Facilitator:
Blackboard Grade Center Tuesday Free Period (3:30 – 4:45) Ad Lab Linda McCabe
Blackboard – all other areas Wednesday Free Period (2:00 – 3:15) Ad Lab Linda McCabe

Starting September 28th through the fall semester:

Topic:
 When:
 Where:
 Facilitator:
Open time – all questions other than Blackboard Wednesday Free Period (2:00 – 3:15) RFH 228 Aaron Flint

Instructional Support has reserved RFH 228 for the Wednesday free period for the duration of the term. If you are teaching in this room and would like to practice with the technology, this time is available to you. If you have questions about other academic tools such as RefWorks, Qualtrics, Turnitin, Clickers, iTunes U, etc. feel free to stop by.

To Be Scheduled:

Lauren Andresen will be scheduling a variety of Chalk & Wire training sessions in the next couple of weeks once the initial student training crunch subsides. Please check our blog or subscribe for updates.

If you cannot make a free period time, don’t worry. You can contact us to arrange training that better fits your schedule. Please click here to see the list of services we provide. This is not an all-inclusive list so if you need help with something that isn’t there, please contact us anyway.

 

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Screencasting Tools

Posted on July 23, 2010 by | Comments Off

Screenshot2010-07-23at9.31.24AM-2010-07-23-08-50.png Whether planned out to the very last detail or done on the fly, screencasts are a great way to capture what you are doing on your computer. Screencasts can add a level of detail and demonstration to lessons and professional development that can’t be done in text and they can be used for troubleshooting as well.

I use screencasts regularly to show faculty how to perform certain tasks such as creating an assignment in Turnitin or sorting their CoursEval results. I incorporate them into my classes and other work with students. Creating a screencast is much easier (and quicker) than trying to explain it or write step-by-step instructions. While screencasts are not an appropriate solution for every scenario, they are quite versatile and it is good to know how to create them.

There are several tools available for creating screencasts. I tend to gravitate toward free tools because they are readily available to everyone. Free tools I have used Jing, Screenr, and QuickTime which comes pre-installed on all Macs. Jing and Screenr are Windows and Mac compatible and are basic and easy to learn. Screenr will even push your screencasts out to your Twitter and YouTube accounts. Purchased screencast tools I have used include Adobe Captivate and Camtasia which comes from the same company as Jing.

If you are interested in creating screencasts try one of these tools or try one of Tech & Learning Magazines Top 10 Applications for Creating Screencasts. This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the tools out there.

For more information or assistance with screencasting tips, techniques, and ideas contact Instructional Support.

Here are some examples:

Turnitin Assignment Creation

Watching Annenberg Videos on a Mac

A very basic explanation of Acrobat Signatures

 

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Audio Podcasting Webinar – Archived Recording

Posted on December 29, 2009 by | Comments Off

On Tuesday, December 29th I conducted a webinar for SNHU COCE faculty on the basics of creating audio podcasts using Audacity and making them available in Blackboard.

This webinar was requested by Trish Dionne from COCE Faculty Development and Training and marketed primarily to online faculty through COCE’s Faculty e-Source Center and faculty development blog. For a holiday week I was very pleased to have 13 attendees though I will admit I was a bit nervous as I usually conduct webinars for one or two people at a time.

This introductory session lasted about 50 minutes and covered the following:

What is a podcast?
Basic equipment and software
Preparing your podcast
Recording your podcast
Putting your podcast in Blackboard (using Learning Objects Podcast Building Block)

If you wanted to attend the webinar but were unable to or you just weren’t aware of it, a full recording of the event can be viewed at your convenience by clicking here. The recording includes all slides, demonstration, audio, and chat.

If you have questions or would like to schedule a training session (face-to-face or online), please contact Instructional Support. More webinars will be scheduled in the near future and announced on this blog so stay tuned.

 

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SNHU on iTunes U

Posted on August 17, 2009 by | Comments Off

Extend your course content beyond text and PowerPoint by creating podcasts and posting them in iTunes U!


iTunes U is now available to all SNHU instructors through Blackboard with some recent enhancements including automatic iTunes site creation, content copying, and more.

iTunes.png

What is iTunes U?

iTunes is a free application from Apple that runs on any Windows or Mac computer. It can play audio and video content as well as PDF’s and synchronize the files to portable media players such as iPods or MP3 players. iTunes U is a site at the iTunes store specifically setup for the delivery of free academic media. It consists of public sites open to all users of the iTunes Store as well as access-restricted sites available only to members of specific campus communities. SNHU’s iTunes U site is access-restricted. Access to SNHU’s iTunes U content is available only to members of the university community and this access is managed through Blackboard.

Why use iTunes U?

iTunes U is an ideal platform for audio and video content for the following reasons:

1) Allows large files which exceed the file size limit in Blackboard
2) Uses high quality video and audio formats – doesn’t convert video to grainy Flash format like YouTube
3) Allows students to download files for viewing off-line on their computer or portable media player
4) More interesting than PowerPoint
5) Enables students to submit work in audio or video formats
6) Accessible directly through Blackboard

Potential uses for iTunes U:

1) Add narration to pre-existing presentations and make available to students
2) Record class sessions/lectures for students to download and review
3) Have student submit audio/video content to an iTunes U drop box (great for Public Speaking)
4) Provide audio/video explanations of problem sets
5) Post class notes in PDF format
6) Record and post guest presenters presentations
7) many more….

How to get started:

To get started using iTunes U, first create an iTunes U site via Blackboard using these instructions. Then create your audio or video content and post it in iTunes.

Instructional Support will provide workshops on the creation of podcasts in the near future. Stay tuned or contact us for more information. In the meantime, you can check out Instructional Support’s iTunes site by clicking here. This is a work in progress so stay tuned for more. Note: You will need iTunes to view and post any audio and video podcasts. If you don’t have iTunes, download it for free from www.apple.com/itunes.

Questions?

Please direct any questions to Aaron Flint at a.flint@snhu.edu or 603-645-9678.

Posted August 17, 2009 by Aaron Flint

 

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Do your own Blackboard Course Roll-Over

Posted on March 6, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Blackboard is a great tool for online course delivery and its list of features can sometimes be overwhelming.  Two tools that are underutilized by instructors are the “Export Course” and “Import Package” tools.  This post will introduce them.

Every term Instructional Support receives many requests from instructors asking to roll-over their old course to a new site.  When we roll over a course, we take content from a Bb course that has already run and put it into a new, empty course shell.  This process allows instructors to make some minor modifications such as date changes but not have to re-create the entire course every term.  While we don’t mind doing this – and when I say we I mean Linda – it is something that instructors can easily do on their own.  The process is relatively easy and is also a good way to back up course content for later use especially for courses that aren’t taught every term and may be removed from Bb.

The first step to doing your own roll-over is to extract the content from your old Bb course site.  This is called exporting the course.  In this step all course content that you choose is bundled and compressed into a .zip file.  The content in the .zip file can be moved to another Bb site (next step) or stored for later use.  The content in the .zip file is not accessible outside of Bb unless you use a tool called bFree.  Look for a post about bFree soon.  Watch this brief demonstration to see how to export your course content.

Once you have exported your course content, you need to put it into a new Bb course site.  This is called importing the course.  In this step you are basically taking the .zip file from the previous step and putting it into your new Bb course site.  Watch this brief demonstration to see how to import your course content.

When your content has been imported into your new course site you still have a little work to do to clean things up.  Review this checklist of items:

  1. Check for any dates that need updating
  2. Check the discussion forums for any old student posts that may have been copied and remove them
  3. Check the Grade Center for duplicate columns and remove as necessary
  4. Check your tool availability.  Often when rolling-over a course some tools are disabled.  To re-enable the tools go to Control Panel and click on Manage Tools.  In there, go into each of the three areas (Tool Availability, Building Block Tool Availability, and Content Type Availability) and re-enable everything you want.

Posted March 6, 2009 by Aaron Flint

 

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Bb Sync for Facebook

Posted on October 27, 2008 by | Comments Off

If you spend a lot of time in Facebook, this is for you.

Blackboard Sync is a Facebook application that lets you to see course updates in Facebook without having to log into Blackboard. You can get notification about new announcements, course documents, new discussion posts and more. Log into Blackboard by clicking a link in Facebook to see all the details of the updates.

To use Blackboard Sync you must first install the application. Click here for step-by-step instructions or watch the video below.  Questions?  email a.flint@snhu.edu

free video player & video platform - interactive video, online video solution: video player, video editor - kaltura
wordpress video - wordpress plugin for integrated video on video blogs, and video tools

 

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Turnitin Assignments in Blackboard

Posted on October 15, 2008 by | 4 Comments

Some Turnitin resources including an Instructor Guide and two videos on creating Turnitin assignments and reading Originality Reports have been posted on the User Guides page. Take a look!

 

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Subscribing to an RSS feed

Posted on September 8, 2008 by | 1 Comment

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary” depending on where you get your definition. Basically, RSS is a mechanism that allows you to subscribe to websites that change regularly so you can be alerted to changes without having to remember to go to the site. While blogs commonly use RSS to alert their readers, you also see RSS on virtually all news websites. RSS is also referred to as an “RSS Feed“ because websites with RSS ”feed“ updates to subscribers.

Websites that use RSS and allow readers to subscribe will display the image to the right.

RSS icon

RSS icon

This image will appear somewhere on the webpage or in your browser’s address bar.

There are a number of ways that you can subscribe to an RSS feed. You can install feed reader software such as FeedDemon, use Google Reader, or better yet, you can use the feed readers that are already built into your internet browser.

These brief instructional videos in SNHU’s iTunes U will show you how to subscribe to an RSS feed using Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Please post a comment if you have questions.

~ Aaron

 

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