LRC Resources

The LRC has done a fantastic reorganization of library sources.  See link here:

http://bluegrass.libguides.com/

Bb Maintenance, 7/12, 12 AM (midnight)

No midnight Bbing in the Thursday wee hours:


A hardware enhancement to the Blackboard infrastructure will take place during a brief maintenance period beginning Thursday Morning July 12 at 12:00am ET for one hour.  All Blackboard courses will be unavailable during this time. All content and student work on the current system will remain intact when Blackboard is back online Thursday morning. 

Bb SP8 Content Editor

Follow the link below from some great tips on the using the new SP 8 Bb Content Editor:

http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/blackboard/blackboard-9-1-sp8-a-new-beginning/#axzz20ESbQSxM

Pearson MyLab Pilot

System Office will be sponsoring a MyLabsPlus Fall 2012 pilot where students have first day, seamless access to the MyLabsPlus course digital content at a charge of $68.75 billed by KCTCS as a customized course charge assessed with tuition. The announcement attached and copied below provides details. Faculty who wish to participate must commit by June 15 – see “What Do Faculty Need To Do?” details near the end of the announcement.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/al8ca4iygf7dz8w/Fall%202012%20Pearson%20Open%20Access%20Pilot%20MyLabsPlus%20Announcement.pdf

Bb SP 8 Updates

Here is the latest update on known SP8 problems...

Good Morning Peer Team and LoD Lead Colleges – Now that we are up and running on Blackboard sp8, things are going pretty smoothly. We’ve corrected many of the errors we saw from the first day. We are still working on three minor issues with Blackboard and one workflow change.

Here are the current Bb issues we are seeing:

Themes: images aren’t displaying on themes (ticket in with Bb to resolve)
Course id on menu is white if buttons are used making it hard to read (the only work around at this time is to use text instead of buttons)
The “Learn More” links in the Course Structures area takes users to pages in French instead of English (ticket in with Bb to resolve)

Workflow Change

Tools: Student tools (discussions, blogs, etc) will only be available and work if they are also set to “show the link” to the tool on the student tools page. FYI - Once they are set to “show”, the Tools link can be removed from the course menu if you do not want students accessing the tools directly.

5-23 Distance Learning Peer Team Notes

The KCTCS Distance Learning Peer Team met Wednesday.  My notes from that meet are linked below.  There was lots of discussion of the Bb SP8 install and troubleshooting problems.  One important tip: clear the cache on your PC.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7nyea51680yxueo/DL%20Peer%20Team%205-24%20Meeting%20Notes.docx

OER Conference

2012 is a significant year for open education. It is 10 years since UNESCO adopted the term “Open Educational Resources” (OER). In joining the global celebrations, the OER Foundation will host a free OCL4Ed workshop.
Open content licensing for educators (OCL4Ed) is a free online workshop designed for educators and students who want to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and Creative Commons licenses.
When: 20 June – 3 July 2012
Where: Online
Cost: Free
Registration: Open
Download poster for OCL4Ed Workshop and share the gift of knowledge. Invite a friend to join #OCL4Ed.