One of the most common objections I hear from instructors about teaching online is the lack of interactivity between students. The most popular tool in Blackboard for student to student (and instructor to student) interaction is the discussion board. I recommend considering the blog and journal tools as well as they are also great ways for students and instructors to interact with each other. The blog tool is best for student to student interaction. It allows students to submit entries (posts) consisting of text, links, and images which can be commented on by other students. The blog can be setup as a...

It is a truism to say the computer technology—a misnomer that should be computing technology—changes quickly.  People often ask us, ‘how do you keep up?’  It’s true, in computing technology there are zillions of changes each year, thousands each day, but there is a way to stay on top of things.  It is three little letters: RSS. There is some debate about what RSS stands for, but let’s go with “really simple syndication.”  It is a scheme that permits web pages—using ‘web pages’ in the broadest sense, but usually meaning ‘blogs’—to publish a...

Welcome back faculty members (if, in fact, you took off the summer at all) to the fall 2011 semester. We have been quite busy and are starting to feel growing pains with our systems. It also seems as though no matter how much time we have to do things, we always need about two more weeks. I bet most of you are feeling the same way about the semester about to begin. Your new Academic Technology Coordinator is Dr. Lillian Payn. Please contact Lillian at ext. 3626 if you have needs or concerns related to Academic Technology. We have upgraded the Blackboard system over the summer to version 9.1, Service...

We really like Evernote.   As an Internet-based note taking application, it has all the features you might want. We tried other note taking applications. First we tried Google Notebook, which was a fine product but was unceremoniously discontinued by Google for reasons probably having more to do with a failure to monetize the product than functionality. Then we tried Office 2010 OneNote. A fine product, but definitely NOT platform agnostic, as a good note taking program needs to be. Finally we tried Evernote, and that’s where we’re staying, at least for the time being. Evernote is platform...

Today is the last day of our spring 2011 semester, and also commencement day.  Just as the day marks the commencement of our students’ ongoing career and educational journeys, so it marks ours in continuing to support technology enhanced education at Palomar College. This semester has seen many changes in our systems, both technically, referring to back-end configuration and hardware platforms, and in terms of user interfaces.  The changes have all been for the better and have been implemented successfully.  We made a major change in the Blackboard system beginning this semester.  We adopted...