Student View in Blackboard

While you can toggle the edit mode button in blackboard to get "sort of" a student view, the only way to get a true student view of your course is to use the "Student View" feature that is found in your Control Panel under 'Course Tools.' Clicking this button will actually create a demo student account in your course that is a true student view. As such, you will see this demo account show up in your course list and you must actually log out of Blackboard and log in as yourself to access your instructor editing functions. See the video below for a quick overview of the Student View in Blackboard.

Qwickly (Blackboard Tool)

Today I'm going to give you a quick overview of Quickly, which is a tool in Blackboard that allows you to perform common tasks in multiple Blackboard courses at once. This should save instructors a lot of time while preparing and maintaining courses in Blackboard.

Screencastify (Chrome Browser Extension)

Screencastify is an interesting Chrome browser extension that allows for Screencasting that will save your screencasts directly to your Google Account for sharing. Other noteworthy features:

• 10 minute time limit with the free version
• can capture system audio
• can publish to YouTube
• can save screencasts to your computer
• can capture a web browser tab, desktop, or web-cam only. 

There are not as many features as some similar paid programs, but it is pretty good for free if wanting to do a quick screen capture to share. Below is a link to the extension and a short demo of it.

Screencastify extension link in the Chrome Web Store https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/screencastify-screen-vide/mmeijimgabbpbgpdklnllpncmdofkcpn?utm_source=gmail

Screencastify Test Run - The screencast below was made with the Screencastify Chrome browser extension on a PC with a webcam.

Keep Calm and Barry On!
BL

Welcome!

Welcome to 'Keep Calm and Barry On!' In this little corner of the web I hope to:

1. Share helpful tips and ideas about using Blackboard, SoftChalk, Web-based sites, apps, or any other instructional technologies that might be interesting to people at the college where I work
2. Spread the news about new instructional technology trends, apps, or web-sites that look interesting
3. Occasionally irritate my readers with bad puns for my own amusement (you've been warned!)

I hope to keep things light-hearted, useful, short and to the point. Thanks for reading and I look forward to any comments and suggestions for future posts. Keep Calm and Barry On! Barry