Groups of Pictures in Blackboard

Just saw this exchange on one of the Bb listservs. This might be a good temporary solution for students in classes to share photos... that is if they are given uploading privledges. Personally, I think something like Flickr would be a better solution, but some faculty aren't comfortable using something offsite for storing student work.

Anyway, here's the exchange:

Hi Evan,


The jpeg files are independent and you must have zipped as one file. There are no links between one pic to the other. Suggest, you make an album of the pics (convert the pics as one file), zip it and try uploading in bb.Hope my suggestion helps.

Eddie Manuel

Evan Williams wrote:

Dear List,



I�m trying to upload a series of photos � I�m starting small, with three simple jpegs � all at once in a single, zipped file. I successfully browse to the files, and then select �unpackage� as the action. Blackboard tells me that everything went fine, but when I go to view the photos, I get an error message with a ton of code. Has anyone experienced this, or better yet, successfully placed a single zipped file containing many jpegs into a particular content area of any Blackboard course?



Thanks in advance for any help.



EW

IT Issues & Strategic Viewpoints in Higher Education: Campus Technology

Interesting short piece in Campus Technology about CMS's:

IT Issues & Strategic Viewpoints in Higher Education: Campus Technology

I found this quote illuminating:

"CMS products from the vendors Angel (www.cyberlearninglabs.com), Desire2Learn (www.desire2learn.com) and eCollege (www.ecollege.com) were uniformly praised by their users. In contrast, WebCT (www.webct.com) and Blackboard (www.blackboard.com) were routinely criticized for skyrocketing prices, bugs, and ease-of-use problems."

Update on May 2004 Session

Someone asked about last May, so I thought I would post an update in the main body of this blog.

The session ended up being far too short for the topic -- only a 1/2 hour for "Using the Collaborative Features in Blackboard." (Remember this was part of a full day on collaborative uses of Social Software, and this was only one breakout session.) This, combined with the fact that most of the faculty members who attended were new users, meant that not very much was accomplished. By the time I got the new users signed in and to the control panel, I didn't have a lot of time left. So, I asked the attendees what they would like to learn about most: roles, the virtual classroom, or groups. Because the virtual classroom is not used at all on campus, they all chose that.

I have not really highlighted this feature at Wheaton, because I have found that it doesn't work well with the Macintosh OS (which most faculty here use) and because Wheaton, a residential college, does not teach any online courses. Chat didn't seem like necessary feature to highlight for face-to-face classes. (To tell you the truth, I don't understand how the whiteboard is really that useful even for online classes. It would be a lot better if everyone could use the space to collaboratively write something in real-time -- a la SubEthaEdit. Also, I thought that you could write on and highlight things on WebPages and import Powerpoint slides into the Whiteboard. Guess not. Anyway, the lightweight chat seems like enough for most faculty to deal with to me.)

The faculty seemed really interested in it, though. And when I suggested they use this for virtual office hours (as opposed to for classes), they liked the feature even more. I will have to try to do some follow-up on this (via email perhaps) and see if anyone actually adopted its use.

I handed out information about roles and groups -- so hopefully those will have some impact. I remain convinced that using the Course Builder role for students holds some real potential. If used thoughtfully, everyone in the class (teacher and students) could share the responsibility for creating the online learning environment. I may try to push this idea again in the future.

More on Banners

I have in my notes from somewhere that the main frame in Blackboard is 625 x 325 pixels. I'm not sure what respolution screen that is for, but it seems to provide some better numbers than the small banner sizes I posted in the previous message.

Seems to me that a banner somewhere around 600 x 100 ppi looks pretty good on a Blackboard page.

Banners in Blackboard

Recommend Banner sizes in Blackboard seem to vary. I have seen

1. 400 x 40 with 40 pt font.
2. 400 x 50
3. 450 x 100

Most seem to want users to keep their banners under 450 x 100 though.

Ideas for upcoming workshop (May 24)

So, I'm running a workshop soon for faculty on Social Software -- "Collaboration and Communication: Exploring Social Software in Academia." And as part of that full day workshop, I will be leading a session on how Blackboard can be used as a tool for collaboration. Of course, using the group areas is the most obvious example off how students can collaborate in an online environment. But I think I should also show faculty how changing a student's role can give them more power over the content of a site. The Course Builder seems to be the most appealing option. It allows the user to add content to any of the content areas, add forums in the discussion areas, post announcements, and do a lot of site management.

We are currently running Blackboard 6.0 and will soon be upgrading to Blackboard 6.1. This is my Blog about supporting and training users at Wheaton College.