Bollixed technology
First day of classes. I’m not on campus, because I’m not teaching and I know parking would be a nightmare, even without half of the central parking lots being torn up or otherwise in chaos. On Friday afternoon, the tech gurus at USF finally finished their upgrading of the on-line courseware package, Blackboard, to the […]
More prep
A few more on-line quizzes done, new sheets delivered to Pro-Copy for the undergraduate course pack, and some stuff taken care of for H-Education‘s book reviews.
Getting ready for the semester, and a surprising invitation
I’ve been delinquent on this work journal, I know. We’ll see if I can be more disciplined this semester, but my 3.14159… loyal readers will understand that other things have priority. Right now, I’m working on my pre-semester to-do list. Syllabi are (mostly) redrafted. I’m slowly working on quizzes for the undergraduate class (more of […]
The uses of Blackboard
I am very skeptical of Blackboard for a number of reasons, primarily its clunkiness, its unusability in many contexts, and the unfulfilled promises up to now. But I have found a way to use the automatic quiz function intelligently, as a way to push students to read material on-time and at least a little thoughtfully. […]
And the pace steps up…
By Sherman Dorn on September 3, 2003
Thanks to several server failures at the university’s Blackboard portal, students have panicked this week about various deadlines for taking on-line quizzes. I say, “Don’t worry too much.” So this week is scrambling to figure out what Blackboard is actually doing (or not) and holding hands. I’ve been invited to be a “fellow” at another […]
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