This year, OIT is piloting a third-party Blackboard extension (or "Building Block") that provides blogs (diary-like web journals) and wikis (group developed websites) contained in Blackboard courses or communities and only visible to enrolled members. Developed by a company called Learning Objects, their "Campus Pack" building block is a set of tools that are designed to foster greater communication between and among Blackboard users.
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| Bob Armstrong |
Journal LX enables users to create, share and comment on blogs within a Blackboard course or community. More Information.
Backpack LX is a dynamic blog and web site builder that permits students and instructors to create and showcase journals and web sites in a central location of the course or community.
OIT will be evaluating the Campus Pack suite of tools during the 2005-06 academic year, and invites instructors/managers and students/members of Blackboard sites to give us feedback on the product. For help or feedback, contact Bob Armstrong (rarmstro@umbc.edu or 410.455.3885). You may also want to see the Team LX and Journal LX help sheets on the UMBC Blackboard Help Tab.
FYI: To see how colleges and universities are using collaborative tools like blogs and wikis in the classroom, see the June 24, 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education special section "Ten Techniques to Change Your Teaching" (login required to view the issue online, or visit the New Media Learning & Development office in ECS 101). Sample articles include the following:
THESE LESSONS CLICK: Thanks to his students' remote-control devices, a biology instructor at the College of Lake County, Ill., can measure the class's comprehension instantly.
C3PO 4 EE101: Electrical engineering students at Montana State University have a lot of knowledge to navigate, and so do their robots.
PIXEL PERFECT: A University of Denver art-history professor exchanges the slide projector for more flexible digital technology.
CUT! Education students at the University of Texas at Austin are learning to tell stories through laptop-produced videos.
CRUDE BEHAVIOR: Computer simulation turns students at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School into oil executives in a tense negotiation.
AMERICAS ONLINE: Videoconferencing allows students at the University of Maryland and the Mexico City campus of the Monterrey Institute of Technology to model a joint business venture.
FACE TO FACE: Thanks to video over IP, the Virginia Community College System can affordably offer an education course team-taught in several linked locations.
A BUILDING TOOL: Three-dimensional software helps students at Carleton College design an environmentally friendly house.
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? Students in an online constitutional-law class from Concord University listen up and write back.
PEN IN HAND: Tablet PC's allow an English professor at CUNY's College of Staten Island to mark up papers the old-fashioned way -- but in a new-fashioned way.