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developed at the University of Washington, lets an instructor transmit his or her slides over a network (typically wirelessly) to every student's computer. Designed for a Tablet PC, the instructor can annotate slides, and the annotations appear on the student's screen in real time. Students can add their own notes, too. While Classroom Presenter's core functionality is useful, the real magic happens when students are given a problem to complete on their computer and electronically submit their work to the instructor through the interactive system. The instructor can then view students' submissions and share them with the class if desired.

Classroom Presenter is a Tablet PC-based interaction system that supports the sharing of digital ink on slides between instructors and students. When used as a presentation tool, Classroom Presenter allows the integration of digital ink and electronical slides, making it possible to combine the advantages of whiteboard style and slide based presentation.

There is a bug in the Blackboard 9.1 discussion board in which students are not able to access files instructors attach using the Browse My Computer button located below the Visual Text Box Editor (VTBE). The workaround for instructors who need to attach files to a discussion board post is to attach the file using the attachment button inside the VTBE itself (see attached picture). This will put a link to the file in the discussion board post itself. Students do not have this problem; they can attach files by clicking the Browse My Computer button below the VTBE.

We have an opportunity in course design, to bring all of the stake-holders to the table. Course design should not just be up to a dept. or a single teacher. Course development can be an opportunity to bring in a librarian, someone from student advising, disabled student services and programs, and developmental education. A course design process can show an instructor how to connect their classroom with other students, instructors, and experts in the field. It can be an opportunity to connect students with professional networks as well as other colleges and schools.  What I have been finding is that when you bring everyone to the table to talk about a course, you can discover many different ways to connect your course to the community than you would have ever thought of yourself.

"USC Blackboard Instructor How-To Movies " movies and pdfs for instructors and students. Well done.

The Online Faculty Competency Certification program is intended for future and existing online teachers. The program is designed to help faculty members become proficient in the use of Blackboard and to become effective facilitators in the online environment.

"Retrieving legacy files As the old dropbox knew no separation of files by assignment (one of its major limitations), it was not possible to move these files into assignments during the upgrade, and there is no storage area facility available into which they could have been moved, so they are not directly accessible within the application after an upgrade or in courses restored from earlier versions. The old dropbox code used Perl, which has been completely removed from the web application in release 9, so the dropbox cannot be accessed anymore to retrieve the legacy files. A rudimentary Java-based interface is being provided to enable each user individually to download any legacy files they may wish to retrieve. These files can then be submitted in newly created assignments as desired or stored in one's Virtual Hard Drive inside the Blackboard Content System, if that is licensed by the institution and enabled by the system administrator. Unfortunately this interface is not exposed via any link in the application. System administrators or helpdesk staff can however make available such a link to their users, either assisting them with file retrieval on an individual basis or by publishing the download link to their users, e.g. in a system announcement. Community Engagement license holders may also wish to add an HTML portal module with this link, thus simplifying the download process, or add it as external link to the tool panel (in the portal menu column). The location of this interface (relative to your server root) is: /webapps/blackboard/execute/ddb It is important to note that this is not a file system location. You actually have to access the URL via a web browser! Sample HTML for a portal module named something like "Digital Dropbox Download": Download your digital dropbox files here When a user accesses this link, he will either see a message that no files were found for him, or a list of courses in w

Improved Ability to Understand Nuance: Students indicated that they were better able to understand the instructor's intent. Students also indicated that instructor encouragement and emphasis were clearer.Increased Involvement: Students felt less isolated in the online environment and were more motivated to participate when hearing their instructor's voice.Increased Content Retention: Students reported that they retained audio feedback better than text feedback. Interestingly, they also reported that they retained the course content to which the feedback was related better than with text feedback. These self-reported findings were supported by the fact that students incorporated into their final projects three times as much audio feedback as text feedback.Increased Instructor Caring: 

We recommend that unless you absolutely need to import a Blackboard course, it is always best to start fresh with a new course. However, we realize that this is not always possible for instructors.

Training for students, instructors, + "Public Courses about Canvas"

No set-up: it automatically calls out students that are at risk while instructors still have time and space to do something about it.

Now comes the important part. Once we have an ordered list of learning objectives, we instructors have to choose a "cognitive cutoff point" at which student responsibility for mastery prior to class ends. "Below" this point, we expect students to master the learning objectives before class through guided practice. "Above" this point, some fluency would be nice, but these are long-term learning objectives and will serve as the focus for class activities.

Key Takeaways For the actor, today's digital technology provides career and business support while - thanks to the increasing use of digital acting counterparts such as linear animation films, games, and virtual simulated performances - threatening the actor's livelihood. An intermediate acting class added digital technology to investigate how it might enhance character interpretation and explore whether it could play an integral part in the performance without becoming the performance. The acting instructor fostered creativity with traditional acting skills, while the technology expert provided tools and instruction in their use for students, with mixed success apparent in the final performances.

What training resources does Instructure provide their clients? Instructure is working hard to provide clients with materials that will make it even easier to train Instructors, LMS Admins, and Students on the basics of Canvas. Suggestions for improving or adding to these materials are always welcome.

It started with an announcement in February that a University of Georgia instructor would start a crowdsourcing project to find out more about working conditions and salaries of adjuncts. Last month, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro announced that she was attempting something similar for graduate student employees. Both projects are attempts at gathering information -- on the salaries of adjuncts and graduate students -- where rigorously researched data is difficult to come by. Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/02/crowdsourcing-contingent-salary-data#ixzz1quha2YCW  Inside Higher Ed 

Scroll down to find the 1:38 Canvas Instructor Training Demo 1 and 2

1 hour 38 minute intro

"5 Keys to Rapid Course Development in Canvas Using Custom Tools"

The CIDI team implemented these open source tools by utilizing a "template wizard" and other supplementary custom tools to quickly build out course shells. ID's meet with instructors to create a course map, and based on an individualized needs analysis for the new course, the shell can be created in Canvas using 5 custom integrations.

"The important point here is that investment in new or adapted physical classroom space should be driven by decisions to change pedagogy/teaching methods. This will mean bringing together academics, IT support staff, instructional designers and staff from facilities, as well as architects and furniture suppliers. Second, I strongly believe in the statement that we shape our environments, and our environments shape us. Providing instructors with a flexible, well-designed learning environment is likely to encourage major changes in their teaching; stuffing them into rectangular boxes with rows of desks will do the opposite."