Blackboard in the High School Classroom

[Bob Smitka]

Over the last year, my district finally "discovered" what Blackboard was and a few teachers, including myself are starting to try to use Blackboard in our classrooms. I understand that there is lots that you can do with Blackboard, but with no formal training on how to use it or properly set it up, I'm sure I'm not using it to its fullest potential. Does anyone out there have any tips or any thing cool or useful that they know can be done with Blackboard? I know how to post my notes and other docs, place announcements on the home page and calendar and use the digital dropbox, but that's where my knowledge of the program ends. Any advice?

[Melissa White]

I am not sure where you are in the state, but the new Blackboard 9.0 has journaling, blogs and great discussions areas. Most ISDs who have BB are going to the new version this summer. You can create groups and have them do group work. There is also Safe Assign which checks for plagiarism. The student or yourself just has to submit their work to Safe Assign through BB and it will let them know if they have plagiarized or not. There is a new work flow area and peer and self assessment where students can work together.
You can also upload videos or link to them through BB. The assessment and survey area is great for formative assessment. You can create a worksheet/quiz/test and provide constructive feedback on each question.
If you need training materials just contact me at [e-mail]. We are in the process of creating new material for 9.0 currently.

Melissa White
Ingham ISD/REMC 13

[Matinga Ragatz]

I am an avid Blackboard user and love what it has done for my high school classrooms. However, I have found it very to difficult to get many of my peers, admin. and community to buy into the idea of having online sources for the high school classroom. I wondered if anyone out there would like to have a discussion about how to better package learning management systems and market it to administrators and parents.
What do you use bboard for?
What works?
What bombed?

[Melissa White]

An article from the New York Times just came out and I have been printing it and taking it to my Blackboard workshops. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/study-finds-that-online-ed...

It is just a two pager, but it is pulled from the 94 page report from the US Dept of Ed and there are now statistics to back up that online education beats the face to face classroom. They found that students who are doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. That is a nice percentage!!!

It goes on to say that online learning allows for providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students. My mantra is that it is a great way to differentiate in the classroom.

Hope this helps!