Teaching With Blackboard

Blackboard is a digital learning and secure website featuring information on courses, learning resources and tools for teaching staff and students designed to support and enhance teaching and learning. It requires a users name as well as a password to access it. Also, it caters to teachers as well as student by providing content management and sharing, online assessments, student tracking, assignment management, peer interaction, inter-active discussion, and virtual collaboration for a dynamic online learning.

Learn for K-12:

6/1/09

Blackboard Learn is an ample online solution that allows K-12 districts to deliver a powered learning experience. Blackboard Learn will help convert education from individual and traditional classrooms to connected communities. A significant and personalized instruction enhances every student’s success.

The product Blackboard Learn was designed to meet all of online learning. It also uses Web 2.0 tech. to tailor the learning experience for K-12 students as well as educators to meet the needs of future classroom. Blackboard Learn provides an easy navigation, management, customizing information and course content based on the unique needs. It increases the students’ connection with social learning.

In addition, it closes the gap between the ways students learn. However, teachers can customize learning pathways for students, and they can construct a powerful content.

Blackboard Learn increases the students’ achievement by interacting among students and staying connected to schools. It gets students, parents, and teachers connected and create sense of community for students. It is also a unique tool that by using it will close the gap in the students’ way of learning and online learning. It helps connectivity between schools, districts, and extend learning beyond the classroom productivity.

A Video on Teaching With Blackboard:

Blackboard Increases Teachers Productivity:

6/03/09

With Blackboard Learners teacher will spend less time tracking and more time teaching. Teachers are easily able with Blackboard Learner can monitor the students progress, evaluate and analyze his engagement and spend less time on grading papers. Blackboard Learners will enable teachers to access the districts as well as other schools materials, resources and methods of teaching online. This will maximizes teacher’s productivity and spend more time on teaching and learning. With Blackboard Learners, teachers can orient and centralize their classes comfortably.

Two Great Features for Blackboard:
The first great tool is the discussion board. It is an extended classroom discussion and activities that keeps students connected to education throughout the entire week. It is also the location where students share their insights and researches among the class students’. Discussion board features grade participation on discussion. Discussion board made it possible for teachers as well as students to subscribe to discussion groups that will enable participants to receive emails to alert them to new activities on the board. The email feature allows instructors to send email through Blackboard to alert students for new posting, activities or grades. Instructors can choose to send to all students or choose to email to selected ones.

Early Warning System:
Blackboard notifies the instructors when students fall below the allocated performance.
• Grade Rule: Identifies when student performance on an item is equal to or below a certain level.
• Due Date: Identifies when a student does not complete course work when it is due
• Last Access: identifies the last time a student accessed the course online.

Links

http://www.blackboard.com/Solutions-by-Market/K-12.aspx

http://otel.uis.edu/blackboard/resources/firsttime.htm

http://www.blackboard.com/Teaching-Learning/Overview.aspx

Illuminating Your Life

I was invited to join a classroom that teaches with Illuminate and I refused. But my daughters joined the class, and ever since she is online to attend the lecture live. This was the first time I heard of Illuminate software.






Illuminate is a web conferencing tool used for interactions with faculty and students miles away or even oceans apart. Education is becoming a universal access, personalized learning, and a global classroom, said by a teacher. Michael Haworth a teacher in Fraser Valley Distance School said that we need the applications that run in multiple environments. He was trying to find a way to reach to the students who have a limited contact with teachers via mail, email or phone in distant learning classes. He was trying to synchronize learning the reaching and learning opportunities by Illuminate.

Why is Illuminate the One for All:

• It improves the student’s outreach, satisfaction, and retention
• It provides affordable professional development of the faculty and staff.
• It improves strategic planning and decision making
• It leverages limited teaching resources.
• It extends reach and enhances competitive advantages

Products:

Elluminate learning suite:

Elluminate Plan: for organizing and scripting session content ahead of time.
Elluminate Live: for transforming the teaching and learning experience with real-time online interaction.
Elluminate Publish: for creating standalone files or industry-standard video files from Elluminate Live recordings
Elluminate Bridges: for seamless integration with popular learning and content management system.


Elluminate vSpaces:
Elluminate vRoom: a meeting room with full functionality, except recording and integrated teleconferencing.
Elluminate vOffice: a personal meeting room for 5-20 participants with full recording capability.
ElluminatevClass: it is for a single virtual classroom for 25-200 students with full recording capability.

Links:

Illuminate Software
Student Guide to Using Elluminate
Illuminate

SMARTBOARD

When you hear the word palace, you immediately think of a huge mansion or a castle filled with glamorous furniture and filthy rich people with spoiled children. However, my palace is my school or any place where I receive knowledge, any kind of knowledge. However, at Mt.Sac I was introduced to white board called the Smart Board. One of the teachers used it for math; I recall it was geometry.

SMART BOARD

Smart Board is a dynamic and interactive computerized white-board that has been used in the classrooms to bring an entire new level of activities to stimulate students. On the screen of the smart board, a teacher can use tool that is provided like focusing on the text with a spotlight, can use a camera to capture images and text, and can use hand finger in place of mouse and keyboard. The smart board can be used in highly structured presentations that include different programs, videos, and images from the internet.

At CID “Central Institute for the Deaf” teacher commented that “having a slide show of pictures and movies on the big screen helps hold my student’s attention while I introduce new vocabulary and concepts of the week, in addition the students love practicing their letter on the Smart Board.” Students themselves would have fun in addition to learning when they use their fingers to drag letters or pictures at the time they are playing games on Smart Board. Smart Board is used to supplement curriculum for grades K-12. At CID school, with the Smart Board, students learn and experience via the internet.

You can maximize learning with hands on and minds on interactive technology tools to support students as they exhibit what they are learning. Here are few ideas to utilize Smart Board: you can teach any subject with Smart Board. You can modify your lesson by adding pictures, articles, stories, math problems, music, or videos to you lesson’s content. You can save a lesson for an absent or a substitute teacher. You can use the highlighter tool to emphasis or shade a spotlight on a key point. You can also post instructions or rules for the class on homework, games, and lesson’s activity, word problem in math, a writing process or anything that is most wanted at the time. You can use it as a search engine by logging on the internet and down loading information, music, videos, pictures, etc. For any lesson, you can use the drag and drop tools. There are countless ideas that could be integrated and consumed by the Smart Board in the classrooms today.

Smart Board is Illuminating experience.

Links

http://www.cid.edu/images/deafeducation/smartboards.htm

http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/SMART+Boards/Front+projection/600i+SeriesGen2/Default.htm

http://eduscapes.com/sessions/smartboard/

http://eduscapes.com/sessions/smartboard/#3

http://www.scholastic.com/interactivewhiteboards/