dRobinson

July 23, 2011

My Career as a Word Cloud

Filed under: Blackboard,GGC — DRobinson @ 3:09 pm

 What would your life look like as a "word picture?" A word cloud or tag cloud offers an interesting example of  this. I recently loaded my resume into TagCrowd.com to see what my career looks like as an image. Here is the result.

created at TagCrowd.com

August 4, 2010

Up and Running

Filed under: Blackboard,GGC — DRobinson @ 10:32 am

The Nine One Chronicles

Blackboard successfully upgraded our system to 9.1 over the weekend. And we broke the LEC (Learning Environment Connector), leaving the Bb Learn and Vista systems independent. We could not, of course, leave them unattached.

Because all our courses are still in Bb Vista (WebCT), Blackboard Consulting also set us up with a Vista Courses with SSO module to re-connect the systems. Once configured, this worked great: an editable Course List including Vista’s Tool News (what’s new) notifications. I’m already hearing positive comments from faculty about this feature.

On the Bb Learn side, we’ve cleaned up the color palette a bit and made some of the tabs personalizable. Folks should like that. I’m also getting our six 9.1 pilot faculty set up on the 9.1 production server so they can do their prep for start of classes on August 23.

This afternoon, the last piece of our upgrade and post-LEC setup should be in place. Blackboard’s SIS Conversion Tool will let us load users, courses, and enrollments xml files (from Banner extracts) into the Bb Learn database, just as we do in the Vista database. Having the systems in sync is kinda important, so I’m told.

Up and running. So far, so good.

July 21, 2010

Content Links in 9.1

Filed under: Blackboard — Tags: , — DRobinson @ 4:43 am

The Nine One Chronicles

Thank you Admin Cert Course! I discovered something I should have known, but had not tested. It is possible to build a hyper-link on a course page to any other course page. Just right-click on the menu link of the destination and have it open in a new tab or window.

The address (URL) of that tab is the address to that specific page. It is the same affect as adding a "Course Link" to the course menu.

Try it!

July 20, 2010

Post BbWorld

Filed under: Blackboard,GGC — Tags: , — DRobinson @ 8:40 pm

 The Nine One Chronicles

BbWorld was a good week. Lots of good input on 9.1. I attended a full-day workshop on GUI Administration, and am now taking a GUI Admin Certification course. I want to know all I can about the Admin GUI before we launch in production.

We were also given an idea of the next 12-18 months of the Blackboard roadmap. (As always, "Subject to change without notice.") Good news there. Several of the 9.1 features that are still non-starters will be built out over the next months. I’m liking this. 

After a series of meetings at BbWorld, we have our proposal from Blackboard for how to deliver Vista courses in a Courses module, after retiring the Learning Environment Connector (LEC), and it looks good.  I hate to have such a positive post, but that’s just how I feel.

Today, I invited our 9.1 pilot Faculty to blog over the next months, sharing their experiences — good and bad — with course development and delivery in Bb. I hope I’ll get some takers. 

July 1, 2010

Beautiful

Filed under: Blackboard — Tags: — DRobinson @ 8:58 pm

The Nine One Chronicles

Today was a good day. It was determined that the ugly we’ve been experiencing with Bb9.1 was a CSS (style sheet) issue. As soon as I switched to a 9.1 optimized style sheet, everything was shiny. Our Bb9.1 looked and functioned like it should. The moral: a stylesheet that works well in Bb9.0 will not necessarily work in 9.1. Remember that.

The Geniuses in Bb Support also found and corrected the “permissions” issue that kept us from being able to restore a back-up file from Vista. I was able then to restore Vista courses into 9.1 and have them look good. I’m liking this.

We’ve also had five faculty volunteer to participate in the 9.1 Pilot project for Fall. Five is a good number. Some will develop one class, while others will teach all their classes in the new system.

With the uglification gone, I was able to create a sandbox course, and add some sample content to it, and then copy it for our 9.1 pilot faculty and CTE staff. Almost immediately, Gautam (our Instructional Designer) found some new Assessment question types that may prove to be really good additions to our tool kit.

Now I am waiting for the (positive, happy, elated?) reaction to their sandbox courses from the courageous Pilot Faculty. Yep, a good day.

June 28, 2010

Day 1

Filed under: Blackboard,GGC — Tags: , — DRobinson @ 8:40 am

The Nine One Chronicles

12:45 PM — Frustrated. I’ve been unable to restore a course back-up file. It just runs and runs. In addition, the interface doesn’t look or function as it did in tie 9.1 preview course or as it should. It’s been uglified. Four hours pretty much wasted. I’ve posted support tickets on both issues. More later …

8:30 AM — The upgrade was successfully completed on Friday morning, but this is my first chance to really work in the system. I just uploaded a course backup file, and assuming it will restore, I will be working in it today. More later …

June 23, 2010

A Few Courageous Souls

Filed under: Blackboard,GGC — Tags: , — DRobinson @ 9:28 pm

The Nine One Chronicles

I made a pitch for 9.1 volunteers today. I presented during the Hybrid Faculty online Wimba session. Will follow up in an email tomorrow. I am hoping for maybe five “courageous Faculty” who are willing to pilot Bb 9.1 in the Fall. It’s gonna be fun!

The cool thing is that I was able to restore a backup of their Hybrid Faculty Bb Vista course on a Bb 9.1 demo account and show them the course they have been working in as a 9.1 version. Most of the pieces came over just fine. The Learning Modules, quizzes, Discussions, etc. all migrated well. They were impressed by the Grade Center and the mashups and other web 2.0ish features.

The session was a good one and the audience was interested. Wonder what tomorrow will bring…

Bb is Down

Filed under: Blackboard,GGC — Tags: , — DRobinson @ 5:46 am

The Nine One Chronicles

Well GGC’s Blackboard 9 Test server is down, …  and that’s a good thing. Over the next 36 hours the server will be upgraded to Blackboard Learn R 9.1 on new, more robust hardware. In addition, our beloved Learning Environment Connector (LEC) will be disconnected until we and Blackboard can determine how to best do co-production of Bb9.1 and Vista, in a post-LEC world.

This upgrade of Test, to Blackboard’s newest release is the next step in the process of keeping our LMS best-of-breed. Of course, for it to work in production, we do need to figure how we’ll authenticate between Bb Vista and Bb Learn, and how we’ll deliver Vista courses via a post-LEC "Courses" module. Blackboard is intent on supporting us well, but Fall semester starts in 61 days, yet I fully expect we’ll be ready in plenty of time. I’m hopeful because we’re GGC and that’s what we do. 

June 18, 2010

Shall We Begin?

Filed under: Blackboard,GGC — Tags: , — DRobinson @ 6:09 am

The Nine One Chronicles

Georgia GwinnettCollege is just beginning the process of piloting Blackboard Learn R 9.1. In these posts, I will share my experience with the process from the Admin and Project Leader point of view.

Disclaimer: I want to immediately mention that GGC is NOT pushing Faculty to move to 9.1 quickly. It’ll be a year before any campus-wide migration. However, we do want to offer 9.1 as an option to a small, courageous band of Faculty early adopters to road test its tools and features.

Background: Georgia Gwinnett College is a new, fast-growing college in the University System of Georgia.  In fall 2008, we began investigating co-production of Blackboard Vista courses and Blackboard Learn R9 while Bb9 was in Beta. (General Availability of Bb9.0 was in January 2009.)

GGC piloted teaching a small number of (production) Vista courses in co-production in Spring and Summer 2009. Over the Summer — a year ago — we did an initial build-out of our Bb9 Community Engagement portal modules. At the same time we moved most Fall 08 and all Spring 09 Vista courses from the USG to Blackboard hosting. In August 2009, GGC went live, in full production: 600ish Vista courses delivered via Bb9′s by way of Blackboard’s  Learning Environment Connector (LEC).

August 25, 2009

One Thing

Filed under: Blackboard,GGC — DRobinson @ 7:02 pm

In the 1991 epic film City Slickers, the old cowboy Curly (Jack Palance) tells Mitch (Billy Crystal) that the secret to life is "One thing … you find that and everything else don’t mean [nothing]." When Mitch asks what the one thing is, Curly answers, "You gotta find that out for yourself."Jack Palance as Curly, in City Slickers
Watch the scene on YouTube.

This year’s college-wide theme is Back to the Vision, and at GGC, one of "the cornerstones of our Vision [is] innovative use of educational technology." GGC is "a model for innovative approaches to education." As you consider how the innovation aspect of the GGC Vision applies in your teaching this year, I’d like to give you a challenge based on Curly’s secret to life.

I’ve been working with GGC Faculty for a while now, and I can see that most of you have found your One Thing in teaching. You do the committee work and grading and all the rest as a way to get to teach students and enrich their lives. Curly would be proud. You have your One Thing, but I would like to encourage you to to consider the power of one thing: one innovation, one small change in how you teach. Could one small change, consistently applied make a difference in your students’ learning? Could it also add to your enjoyment as a teacher? I believe it can. …

I originally posted this in August on a GGC blog, and had two excellent articles from Faculty celebrating their one thing that has added benefit to their teaching in Blackboard. 

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress