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.

Bb SP 8 Latest Update

We should be online here shortly... From Sandy Cook:

Good news!  Blackboard Support and CRD have successfully installed Service Pack 8 and are in process to set the JAVA configs and other settings/configs to make the environment ready for traffic.  I’ll update you again when Blackboard is back online.  Thanks again for your help and support during these past several days.  Members of the Chancellor’s Office and I are preparing a message for the CAO and CSO as well as students

Distance Learning Workshop 2012 Links and More

Thanks to everyone for your participation in the 2012 Distance Learning Workshop.  Linked below are a number of sites, topics and technologies that were mentioned in the Workshop.  Good luck, everyone, getting ready for Bb SP8!

• List of Open Textbooks: www.scoop.it/t/open-textbooks
• List of Social Media Tools: www.scoop.it/t/social-media-learning-tools
• Ducklink, a screen capture tool:  http://www.ducklink.com/ 
• Jing, a screen capture tool:  http://www.techsmith.com/jing 
• Moodle, an open-source Course Management System:  http://moodle.org/ 
• CafeScribe, a commercial digital textbook company:  http://www.cafescribe.com 
• Authentic Assessment, a general time referring to assessments where students create products to demonstrate learning as opposed to taking tests.  Read more here, here, and here. 
• Khan Academy, online instructional videos in math, science, history and more:  http://www.khanacademy.org/
• TweetChat, prearranged discussions that occur on Twitter:  http://tweetchat.com/.
• Blackboard Drive, manage Bb files on your computer, not in Bb.  Watch here.
• Bb Rubrics, create grading evaluation criteria to grade Bb assignments.  

Yet Another Free Online Conference

The College Open Textbook Community is sponsoring a FREE virtual conference entitled "Community College Online Teaching Conference" on June 13 - June 15.

Please use the following URL to register for this FREE conference. If you are not a member of the College Open Textbook Community, you will need to register for a FREE web site membership and then register for the FREE conference.

http://collegeopentextbooks.ning.com/

Let me know if you have any questions regarding this conference.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Flipped Learning Conference

The Flipped Learning Conference runs June 19-20.  There's a $100 fee to view the stream.  If anyone (in the BCTC community) is interested, contact Ben.

More details about the event from their Web site:

http://www.flippedlearning.org/

Brainfuse Demonstration

Below you will find a link for an audio demonstration for Brainfuse tutoring. Click the link, then add the username and pw provided, then click “Higher Ed demos”

http://ftp.trustforte.com

Username is BrainfuseFTP64
PW is &BrainFuse#37



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Ben's Workshop Materials

Linked below are Ben's materials for workshop sessions he is leading on the May 4 workshop:

Bb Top 10 for the F2F Instructor
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3vuzpqx9xxl9xds/bb_top10.pptx

Rubrics and Assessment Strategies
https://www.dropbox.com/s/439ytg32v3x8ngj/Rubrics%20and%20Assessment%20Strategies%20rev.ppt