Tool Availability in Blackboard

So you just left the department meeting and everyone is RAVING about the new features in Blackboard 9.1 (check here for tutorials).  You immediately rush to http://udc.blackboard.com to login, but you don’t see the tools they were talking about:(
To remedy this, go to the *CUSTOMIZATION* menu under the CONTROL PANEL and select TOOL AVAILABILITY. 
You will see the following page and will have the opportunity to select or deselect items.


To access the tools, click on *TOOLS* in your menu. 
If you don't see a tool...go back back to TOOL AVAILABILITY. Be sure to SAVE your options before clicking on another menu item.

For more information on Blackboard tools, see the annotated User Manual.

Information Literacy -- Introducing Zotero

Part 3 of our Information Literacy Series by Michael Fitzgerald, Electronic Services Librarian

Those of us reading these words live in a world where information is plentiful. Whatever your search is, finding something isn’t such a challenge. The many subscription resources available to you at UDC will give thousands and thousands of results. Finding the right thing can be more difficult and the next question is what to do once you have found something you want to use. Sometimes it can feel like a full-time job just keeping track of all the information you need for the many projects you are working on each semester.

There are tools that can help with this. Zotero is a free plug-in for the Firefox browser (no others at this point, but Firefox is free too!). It does three important things. It helps you collect different kinds of citations from a variety of sources all in one place; it lets you organize and annotate those citations; and it works with your word processor to create references and bibliographies, all formatted according to the style you choose. There’s much more it can do, but those are just the top three.

Wherever you find it — whether in the library catalog, one of our many subscription databases, or on Amazon, YouTube, or somewhere else — the information can be collected and stored in Zotero and will be ready for you to use later in papers and projects so you can cite your sources appropriately. Notecards were a good idea, but they are so last century. Zotero does all that and much more.

The award-winning Zotero software was developed by the Center for New Media and History at George Mason University, one of our partners in the Washington Research Library Consortium.
There’s more information available, including video tutorials on using Zotero. As part of its information literacy services, the UDC Learning Resources Division offers instruction on Zotero. If you are interested in a session, please fill out our online form. We look forward to helping you move forward with this cutting-edge tool.

Finding the Right Community-Building Tools for Your Online Course

A throw back post from last semester...as mid-terms and eventually finals approach, these tools/ideas may be helpful in giving students a different way of digesting information.  Please drop by the Center for Academic Technology in Building 41 Room 106 if you'd like to find out more on these tools.

Finding the Right Community-Building Tools for Your Online Course

By Rob Kelly 

---

There are many ways to create a sense of community within the online learning environment. The challenge is finding tools and techniques that suit your course without creating too much of a burden for you or your students.

The process of selecting the technology to create an online learning community should be “very purposeful so that it has meaning and adds value,” says Dr. Fran Cornelius, associate clinical professor at Drexel University.  Cornelius and her colleague Mary Gallagher-Gordon,  assistant clinical professor at Drexel University, recently spoke with Online Classroom about how they develop learning communities in their online courses using the following tool.

Voice email—Before a course begins, Cornelius sends students a voice email welcome message to set the tone for the course. Also, when giving students feedback on their assignments, she often includes a voice email message with the marked up assignment to reiterate the main points of her feedback and to “soften the blow because a lot of times a marked up paper can be very intimidating,” she says.

Voice board—Each course begins with an introduction. The instructors ask students to talk about where they live and work, where they see themselves in five years, and any other personal information they would like to share. Voice recordings convey personality. For example, one student recently had two young children lead a cheer and introduce the student. It was a unique way of introducing herself and clearly demonstrated that she likes children—something this student deemed an important part of who she is.

Once the course is in session, the voice board can also be used as a means for students to share their opinions.  “It’s a very good opportunity for students to very succinctly state a position. Like NPR’s ‘This I Believe,’ it forces them to be concise,” Cornelius says.

Photo gallery—Students have the option of posting photos of themselves to further convey something about who they are and what’s important to them.

Student café—To encourage students to interact informally, Cornelius and Gallagher-Gordon set up private areas within Wimba, a collaborative online learning platform that features voice and text chat, breakout rooms, and other tools. There also is a program-wide area that serves the same function for a broader group of students. “It’s the virtual equivalent of the student union, and it’s off limits to faculty unless they are invited by the students,” Cornelius says.

Voice over PowerPoint—The purpose of narrated PowerPoint presentations is to provide students with content that they can access independently so that when they meet synchronously, the focus is on discussion rather than lecture.

Synchronous class sessions—Cornelius and Gallagher-Gordon use Wimba for their synchronous sessions. Like other virtual classroom platforms, it has several tools that can help create learning communities, including the ability to create breakout rooms for group work and a polling feature, which generates interaction similar to what occurs with face-to-face use of clickers.

“We don’t want to waste people’s time with content and activities that they can be doing independently. That’s really critical when planning those synchronous sessions. For us, it’s very important philosophically to have students to be able to think on their feet. If you have a synchronous session and you pose questions and generate discussion students have to articulate their positions and be able to pull the information together and connect the dots in a more spontaneous situation,” Cornelius says.

In addition to synchronous class sessions, Cornelius and Gallagher-Gordon encourage students to meet within Wimba independently to work on group projects. “If it is a group project, we tell students that it might be easier to be in the same time zone or to have the same clinical background—some variable that pulls them in,” Gallagher-Gordon says. “They come back from [these breakout rooms] with strong relationships. They find out that these are the people from their last couple of classes who they have never spoken to. A lot of times it’s online in a room using Wimba where we first see communities develop.”

Blogs—Cornelius and Gallagher-Gordon primarily have students use blogs for their private journals, which encourages them to reflect on the learning experience.

Wikis—They use wikis for collaborative writing and, in the case of an education course, students create a course within a wiki. “The wiki allows the students to utilize a wide variety of available tools to create an interactive online course, which at the end of the term becomes public and is peer critiqued,” Cornelius says.

Virtual office hours—Cornelius and Gallagher-Gordon often develop mentoring relationships with students that continue after a course has ended. One tool that has helped facilitate these relationships is the virtual office hours, which they conduct in Wimba.

Contact Fran Cornelius at fc28@drexel.edu and Mary Gallagher-Gordon at mag45@drexel.edu.

Source: http://www.magnapubs.com/issues/magnapubs_oc/10_4/

Useful Web 2.0 Tools for the Clasroom

FREE Online Tutoring for all UDC students through SMARTHINKING!

Did you know that all University of the District of Columbia students have access to FREE Online Tutoring through SMARTHINKING?

There are Math, Business, Nursing, and Writing subjects and over 1500 tutors to help you!

To access FREE tutoring:

1. Log into your Blackboard account

2. Select a course

3. Select "tools" on the left

4. Scroll down to click “Smarthinking login

If you have difficulties accessing your account, please call 202-274-5665 or email ejones@udc.edu. 
Once you are logged in, check out their Student Handbook here http://www.smarthinking.com/static/content/SMARTHINKING_Student_Handbook.pdf  and feel free to contact SMARTHINKING’s Customer Support Team at 888.430.7429 ext 1 or support@smarthinking.com. 

My Top 10 Learning Technology Tools

Just listed my top learning tech tools for the Emerging List of Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010 survey done by the wondrously fabulous Jane Hart [see her site]. 
[not in any order]

1. Slideshare – Like YouTube or Flickr, but for PPT presentations
   
2. Mywebspiration – powerful concept mapping tool
   
3. Diigo – social bookmarking with cool sharing features
   
4. Prezi– non-linear PPT…you gotta see it to understand.
   
5. Google Reader – keep track of blogs
   
6. Jing – record screencasts and archive them online
   
7. scribd – Share documents online
   
8. a.nnotate – Annotate documents and files and share them online
   
9. Google docs – Edit and create documents via the web… who needs MS Office?
   
10. Evernote --  An online notebook which has mobile apps to keep you connected from anywhere

If you would like to contribute to the list, click here.
See below for the 2009 list:

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

View more presentations from Jane Hart.