Search for “Bb Student by Blackboard” Download the free Bb Student app. If you download the app onto a laptop, sync your iPhone with your laptop. Open the app and enter “Curtin University” in the field provided. Login using your Curtin ID. By integrating with your LMS rather than adding yet another external tool to work with, SafeAssign provides a seamless experience. Robust Content Sources User submissions are compared with content from other students at their own school, from other schools, from academic and business journals, and from the broader Internet.

You may have heard the news last week that Articulate launched a new screencasting tool called Screenr. It is a free web-based tool that lets you create screencasts without installing any software.

I really like Screenr. If you haven’t tried it out yet, you should give it a whirl. Here’s what I like best:

  • Screenr is super easy to use and there’s nothing to download. You just click the record button on the website and you’re recording your screen activity and your narration.
  • The image quality is pretty darn good. You can even watch the screencasts back at HD-quality and they look great.
  • Screenr gives you multiple ways to use your screencasts. It works with Twitter and the screencasts play as Flash on the web. You can also upload the screencasts to YouTube. And you can even download the videos as MP4 files. They also look nice on the iPhone. All these options give you a number of ways to reach your learners.
  • My favorite…there’s no branding on the downloaded MP4 files. Since you can download the videos, you’re free to use them as you wish. That means you can use it in your elearning courses without looking like one of those MLS soccer players. Go Sounders!
  • And of course, Screenr is free. Free is always good.

With that said, let me share some ideas on how you can use Screenr with your rapid elearning courses.

1. Add Screenr Videos to Your Blogs, Wikis, and Slides

Screenr gives you an embed code. That means you can create a video and easily add it to your blog, wiki, or website (or any other place that takes HTML). If you use the Articulate products, you can the web object feature to add videos to your slides.

Here are a couple of tutorials on how to embed the Screenr videos in Moodle and how to embed them in Blackboard. Below is an example of the Screenr video embedded in a slide using the web object feature.

Click here to view the web object demo.

2. Download Screenr MP4 Files & Add to Your Course

As I mentioned earlier, one of my favorite things about Screenr is that I can download the videos as MP4 files and not have the Screenr logo in the video. That means I can easily use them in my courses.

Here’s an example of a Screenr MP4 file inside an elearning course.

Click here to view the MP4 demo.

3. Create a Virtual Whiteboard

Use a tablet PC or something that lets you do pen input to simulate a whiteboard. All you need is a blank area to write and capture the video. Here’s a demo of a whiteboard screencast in an elearning course.

Click here to view the whiteboard demo.

4. Put Screenr in the Hands of Your Learners

There’s no reason to hog all of this goodness for yourself. Have your learners do screencasts to demonstrate their skills. It’s a great way to reinforce their learning and assess their level of understanding.

Download

Screenr works with Twitter and Youtube. And as I stated earlier, the embed code means your learners could make videos and put them on their own blogs or wikis.

Here’s an example where both teacher and learner are going through the process together. It gives you an idea of how Screenr can add value to the learning process.

Click here to view the demo.

5. Make it Mobile

Many mobile video devices and smart phones can play MP4s or videos from a website. That means you can take your courses mobile. All you need to do is use the URL in your mobile device’s web browser.

Here’s an example of what it looks like if you view the Screenr videos from an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Click here to view the iPhone demo.

When I first heard about playing back screencasts on the iPhone, I was a bit skeptical about what it would look like. But I’ll have to tell you tha
t I was pretty impressed with the image quality considering the size of the screen. I thought that it would be too hard to see what’s going on, but that wasn’t the case.

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Of course, you can also download the MP4 video and then upload it to your device manually.

So that’s about it. Screenr’s a pretty cool application. It’s easy to use. Free. And can be used with your elearning courses. What are some other ways you can think of to use Screenr videos for your elearning? Click on the comment links to share your thoughts. (And better yet, share your screencasts!)

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Tutorials

If you want to learn more about some of the ideas I covered in this post, I added a few quick Screenr tutorials to help you get started.

  • Embed screencasts in your blogs, wikis, and rapid elearning courses.
  • Changing the dimensions of the embed code to fit in your blog and wiki pages.
  • Download Screenr videos as MP4 files.
  • Create a virtual whiteboard with Screenr and PowerPoint.
  • How to add your Screenr video to Youtube.
  • Add a Screenr video to your blog or wiki.
  • Add Screenr video as a web object in Articulate Presenter.

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.

Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs

Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills

Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.

Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.

Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

A wiki within Blackboard is a page, or set of pages, that can be corroboratively edited by the instructor and by the students enrolled in the class. There are two different types of wikis available:

  • Course wikis - viewable to all course participants. Typically, all participants can also add and edit pages in the wiki.
  • Group wikis - only those course participants assigned to a specific group can add and edit the wiki associated with their group. Instructors can choose whether to allow other participants to view wikis for which they are not members.

For both types of wikis a log of all changes is kept, so it is easy to keep track of a given page's editorial history, and of participants' editing activity.

Using Wikis in the Curriculum

Wikis offer educators an opportunity to create a different type of web resource in which both the instructor and the student group can have equal active roles as contributors and editors. The nature of Wikis means they offer a number benefits relating to learning and teaching applications:

  • Wikis are extremely flexible allowing any site structure to be created.
  • Wikis can be used in classroom based, hybrid, and online courses.
  • Wiki functionality makes them ideal for collaborative writing applications and knowledge bases that can be utilized across sections, terms and courses.
  • Wiki integration into the curriculum assists in transferring from instructor-centered to learner-centered educational opportunities.
  • Enables web publishing without knowledge of HTML or use of special web development tools.
  • Enables faculty to track who contributed what and when (see 'Marking Group Authored Wikis' section).

There are also a few disadvantages that you may want to take into consideration before utilizing this tool in your courses:

  • Using a wiki does involve learning about acceptable editing practices (e.g. how to deal with conflicting opinions).
  • Managing a wiki can require significant time commitments from faculty and/or student moderators as page edits should be closely monitored at the beginning of the project/assignment.
  • A wiki has no predefined structure to guide new users and visitors can find navigating a wiki difficult.
  • IP ownership and copyright of Wiki pages can be contentious unless clear policies are in place.

Tips for Successful Assignment Design:

  • Allow experimentation time
  • Ease into it
  • Remember that collaboration is a skill
  • Create guidelines or let your students create them
  • Have an assessment plan and make it clear to the students

The following tutorials step you through creating and editing Blackboard Wikis. Clicking on the tutorial title will expand the view window and expose the associated tutorial. Click on the item again to collapse the tutorial.

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Quick Start Instructions

  1. Click on a Content Area in the Course Menu to the left of the page.
  2. Navigate to the appropriate location within that area where the wiki is to be added.
  3. From the Add Interactive Tool tab, select Wiki. The Create Link:Wiki screen will be displayed.
    Note: If Wiki is not an option within the drop down menu, it will be necessary to activate it under Control Panel > Customization > Tool Availability. Simply check the box under Available in Content Area and click [Submit].
  4. Click on the [Create New Wiki] button. The Create Wiki screen will be displayed.
  5. Enter a name for the wiki in the Name field.
  6. Provide instructions for wiki assignment in the Instructions field. Instructions can be posted as plain text, or a combination of text and audio/video.
  7. If the wiki will be available for the term move to item 8, else:
    • Enter a date and time in the Display After date and time fields if the wiki should be hidden from students until a specific date
    • Enter a date and time in the Display Until date and time fields if the wiki should be hidden from students after a specific date
  8. If the wiki will not be graded skip down to step 10. To create a graded wiki click on the radio button to the left of 'Grade: Points possible' text and enter the point possible in the field. The 'needs grading' status field will be displayed.
  9. If you wish to accumulate a series of revisions for each student prior to reviewing them for grading:

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    • Click the box to the left of 'Show participants in 'needs grading' status after...' field
    • Click the drop down arrow in the box to the left of Entries, and then select the number of revisions that should be accumulated before a notification is created in the Grade Center 'needs grading' view.
  1. Click the [Submit] button to save the wiki settings.

A wiki within Blackboard is a page, or set of pages, that can be collaborative edited by the instructor and by the students enrolled in the class. It is one of the few tools available, which allows students to add content to a Blackboard course web site.

Viewing a Wiki

Viewing a wiki site works very much like viewing any web site – use links on any of the pages to go to another page (these links will need to be created by the page editors). The task bar on the right side also allows access to all pages in the wiki – they are listed alphabetically under the wiki title.


Adding Wiki Pages

The first thing that you have to do is create a home page by clicking on the [Create Wiki Page] in the top left-hand corner of the wiki window. The Create Wiki Entry page will be displayed.

  1. Enter a title for the page in the Title field.
  2. Type or paste the post information in the Content field. You can also add audio, video and images to the postings by clicking on the bottom row of images in the icon bar.
  3. Click the [Submit] to save the page.

Additional wiki pages are created in the same way by clicking on the [Create Wiki Page] button.

Software

Editing a Wiki Page

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Pages can be edited by clicking the [Edit Wiki Content] button at the bottom of the wiki pages or clicking on the drop-down arrow to the right of the page name in the table of contents area. The wiki edit page will be displayed.

Make page modifications in the Content area and then click the [Submit] button to save the modifications.