What does this mean? 

First of all, let me reassure you that everything you have previously uploaded to Blackboard will still be there on Monday morning!  You may continue using Blackboard this afternoon and this evening, however, any work that you do not save before the 12am deadline will lost.

New features and Enhancements fall into the following catagories:

Grade Center
Self and Peer Assessment Building Block
Safe Assign
Blackboard Content System Enhancements
Scholar Building Block for Basic

For more information, check out a PDF of the Faculty Release Notes for Blackboard 8.0.  It might also be a good idea to download and look over a copy of the QUICK source guide to version 8. 

You may also contact us to set up a training session on blackboard. 
Email:  blackboard@fordham.edu
Phone: 718-817-2289

What about the things you should do?

That’s a good question! There are many ways to make presentations more engaging. Take a look at some of the ideas on ways to avoid the pitfalls of using PowerPoint and create more stimulating presentations.

Death By PowerPoint

Dodging Bullets in Presentations

I’d like to tell you about how I use it, but first take a quick look at this short 2 minute video so I can tell you a little bit about what it is…

(you will be unable to see the video if you are using internet explorer, click on this link to view the video on Youtube until Edublogs fixes the problem)

If it looked like I had a lot of bookmarks, that’s because I do!! I’ve been using del.icio.us for about 3 years now and have collected over 1300 links. Math, Technology, and Education are three of my most frequent tags because for the last 8 years I’ve taught mathematics on the high school level. I’ve learned to save everything I find useful or interesting and label them liberally with tags so that way I can find what I need when I need it.

It’s been an invaluable resource and a huge timesaver— not only do I have access to my bookmarks online and can use it like a search engine, but del.icio.us also allows me to search links that other people have saved. And it’s easy to add an RSS feed of my links to keep up-to-date with my bookmarks! (hmmm… if you don’t know what RSS is, don’t worry–we’ll talk about that soon!).

There are of course many more features, and ways to use it, but hopefully you’ve heard enough to want to get started! Take a look at the links I’ve posted at the bottom of the page for more information or you can go directly to del.icio.us and register for your own account!

~Kristen

Del.icio.us basics and tips

Descriptions, definitions, and details about using del.icio.us

Top 10 Ways to Use Del.icio.us

My del.icio.us links on the web

or take a look at this Yummy Slideshow (you can skip to slide 6)

12:00am on Friday, August 8th

To ease the burden on those teaching early-start classes, 08F courses will be in the system as of 9:00am Monday, July 28th, and faculty teaching this fall may begin updating course information at that time.

Blackboard has prepared Instructor Release Notes for version 8 of Academic Suite to help users get started quickly with the new features, and we encourage everyone to peruse this short document, which can be downloaded in PDF format at: http://tinyurl.com/59pstk

If you have any questions about the upgrade, please don’t hesitate to email blackboard@fordham.edu, or call 718-817-2289.