Congratulations to iPad Winners

The Technology and Learning Program is happy to announce the two winners to the Bb Learn iPad Giveaway contest. Those who attended Bb Learn workshops from Spring semester through August 24 were entered in the contest to win an iPad 3. The only requirement was attend a Bb Learn workshop. Each workshop attended gave the person another chance to win.

Compiled attendance sheets counted 672 participants in this contest. A random drawing on August 31, 2012, resulted in the following: Samir Nissan from the College of Business, and Bev Marcum from the College of Natural Sciences. Congratulations!

Please continue to visit the Technology and Learning Program for assistance with Bb Learn. Workshops will continue to be offered throughout the semester. Visit the TLP website, www.csuchico.edu/tlp for more information. We are located in the basement of Meriam Library, room 003.

Turnitin Offers 30-Minute Webcast Series

The 30-Minute Webcast Series from Turnitin is for busy educators who want to stay current with the latest trends & technologies on preserving academic integrity, improving student writing across the curriculum, and promoting student success. Turnitin Webcast Schedule & Registration 

For brief tutorials on getting started adding Turnitin assignments in Blackboard Learn, visit the TLP Knowledge Base.

Faculty say good things about Bb Learn

Many faculty have already adopted Bb Learn for their courses last spring. Here is what some of them had to say about Bb Learn when asked…

Welcome back, faculty! News from TLP

On behalf of the Technology and Learning Program (TLP), welcome back to CSU Chico for Fall 2012. You will notice changes to the Portal regarding access to the learning management system, Blackboard (Bb) Learn. All fall 2012 classes are in Bb Learn. Vista has retired. Faculty may access old Vista courses in order to transfer content or for grade review but student enrollments of this semester’s courses will not be there. Each fall 2012 Bb Learn course section has been created with a few basic tools and a welcome page, and these are currently visible to students.

Why use Bb Learn? It is now our current and improved learning management system. All students will have access to their courses in this one system rather than two systems like last semester. Bb Learn has an improved Grade Center, an updated web interface, easier file management, and easier integration with publisher content. Also it will integrate well with other complimentary technologies and services that expand the features and functionality, making it more comprehensive and innovative to engage 21st Century Learners, increasing efficiencies in the learning and teaching processes.

Since we started offering workshops on Bb Learn, 643 faculty and staff have attended at least one training and many of you have attended several or our complete series. Hundreds of faculty have attended workshops during Spring and Summer, and each of them have had their names added to our upcoming drawing for two iPads. There’s still time to take a workshop and get into the drawing until Friday, August 24. We’ll announce the winners on August 31! See the TLP website for the continuing schedule of workshops, www.csuchico.edu/tlp/.

TLP Can Also Help You with the Following Options in Bb Learn
• Bb Collaborate allows faculty to have a virtual classroom, virtual office hours, and virtual chat with their students or students with one another via text, sound, and/or video.
• Bb Drive allows faculty to drag and drop files from desktop directly into courses, with easy editing and updating directly from your hard drive’s folders into Bb Learn.
• Turnitin.com has many features. The most popular being plagiarism prevention software or teaching students how to appropriately cite resources in their papers. There is also GradeMark that allows faculty to more efficiently edit each student’s paper online, inserting comments from a library of common annotations into their paper.
• Some publisher’s content can be integrated in Bb Learn, such as McGraw-Hill.
• Access to Bb Learn from mobile devices is on the horizon.

A New Chico State Blog!
We would like to introduce you to a new blog, http://blogs.csuchico.edu/dlt/, from ATEC’s Distributed Learning Technologies who are the technological support for academic technology. This blog will communicate more technically and specifically the status, updates and maintenance windows for Bb Learn and surrounding systems. It is hot off the virtual press, so it may take a day or two to appear, but do check it out.

TLP’s blog is found at http://blogs.csuchico.edu/tlp/ — this blog deals with new uses and high impact practices of integrating technology into your curriculum…pedagogy and technology.

The Respondus password has been updated for 2012-2013

If you’ve got Respondus on your computer to build and upload assessments, you may notice that last year’s password has expired. Never fear! The new 2012-2013 password is located in the Respondus tab inside Blackboard Learn under Faculty Support. If Respondus will not accept the password, you may be using an older version of the software; download version 4.0 from the same page. Questions? Call TLP at (530) 898-6167.

 

Wildcat accounts can now access many Google services including YouTube, Maps, Blogger and more.

Students, faculty and staff can now access many more Google apps by logging into Google through their Wildcat account (http://www.csuchico.edu/google) or by using their Google wildcat account email address as the login name at a standard Google login screen.

Previously, Wildcat accounts were only able to access the Google Mail, Calendar, Docs, Sites and Talk services. The campus has now enabled access to many Google services including YouTube, Maps, Blogger, Picasa, Google+ and more. The full list of apps is available on the ITSS Knowledge Base. Through these services students, faculty and staff with Wildcat accounts can create and share many kinds of content. Just like Wildcat mail, these services are provided at no cost by Google and access is governed by the campus’s electronic resources use policy.

Technical support for using these services is provided primarily by Google, at http://support.google.com.  Faculty who wish to use Google services in their teaching are encouraged to contact the Technology & Learning Program to meet with an Instructional Technology Consultant who may provide advice on how to implement these services for instruction. For more information and a complete list of the enabled Google services, see the Google Apps for Education area of the TLP Knowledge Base: https://wiki.csuchico.edu/confluence/x/wQ-xAQ.