{"id":802,"date":"2014-08-14T10:10:52","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T10:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/?p=802"},"modified":"2016-09-13T11:14:56","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T11:14:56","slug":"power-up-get-more-out-of-blackboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/2014\/08\/14\/power-up-get-more-out-of-blackboard\/","title":{"rendered":"Power Up: Get more out of Blackboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/h1>\n

\"mushroom\"<\/a>Continue the new academic year and check if you have tried the features listed below – they may benefit your experience. \u00a0<\/em><\/h1>\n

<\/h1>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1) Upload a Blackboard avatar<\/h2>\n
\"Examples<\/a>

Examples of avatar images within Blackboard<\/p><\/div>\n

You can use an avatar<\/a> to represent yourself in Blackboard. \u00a0Your avatar<\/a> will appear beside blog posts, discussion board posts, group pages and other areas of Blackboard. \u00a0Make your avatar<\/a> in your favourite graphics app and size it to 150×150 pixels.<\/p>\n

Our web site will take you through the process of uploading your avatar to Blackboard step by step: <\/strong>http:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/isolutions\/computing\/elearn\/blackboard\/student\/bbavatar.html<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2) Get the Blackboard Mobile Learn App<\/h2>\n
\"Screenshot<\/a>

Screenshot from Blackboard Mobile Learn App<\/p><\/div>\n

Bb Student\u00a0is available for IOS, Android, and Windows Phone devices. \u00a0The app is\u00a0for students only\u00a0\u00a0This app is free of charge.<\/p>\n

Our website tells you how to get the app. \u00a0There are guides available covering the features available and some best practice guidance. <\/strong>http:\/\/elearn.southampton.ac.uk\/mobilelearn\/<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3) Try out the “Global Navigation” menu<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The “Updates” section of The global navigation menu shows you what content has recently been uploaded to your course.<\/p><\/div>\n

The “Global Navigation Menu” surfaces relevant information from across your courses letting you know what new material, posts, and scores have been added to your courses.<\/p>\n

Find out more on our website:\u00a0http:\/\/elearn.southampton.ac.uk\/blackboard\/student\/globalnav\/<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4) Learn about more new features in Blackboard<\/h2>\n
\"Blackboard<\/a>

Blackboard welcomes you when you first login and shows you how to find the Global Navigation menu.<\/p><\/div>\n

Following the upgrade to Blackboard in June 2014 we have pages describing the new features available and how to use them:<\/p>\n

Blackboard: What’s new http:\/\/elearn.southampton.ac.uk\/blackboard\/newin2016\/<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5) Power Up Your Web Browser<\/h2>\n

A full list of officially supported web browsers and operating systems is on our website here:\u00a0http:\/\/elearn.southampton.ac.uk\/blackboard\/student\/osbrowsercompatibility\/<\/a><\/p>\n

For best results whilst using Blackboard, use Mozilla Firefox<\/a> or Google Chrome<\/a>. \u00a0You can use Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 or above, or <\/strong>Apple Safari if you wish<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Whilst considering your web browser it’s worth making yourself aware of some browser plugins that can improve your privacy whilst using the Internet. \u00a0Some suggestions are:<\/p>\n

Ghostery<\/a> – to stop corporate tracking of your web usage.<\/p>\n

HTTPS Everywhere<\/a> – to hinder government and criminal monitoring of your web usage by setting your browser to automatically use the secure version of common web sites.<\/p>\n

Privacy Badger<\/a> – to stop Facebook and other corporations from tracking your activity across the Internet<\/p>\n

Adblock<\/a> – if you wish to stop seeing adverts on the web.<\/p>\n

The above suggestions are not official University nor iSolutions guidance nor recommendations and the web sites above should be read carefully before you install so that you understand what these programs do and how to “whitelist” sites that you wish to let track you. \u00a0There are many other alternative plugins –\u00a0 these above have been successfully used for some time by the Blackboard team.<\/p>\n

We use Google Analytics<\/a> to monitor usage of Blackboard and so would like you to consider whitelisting blackboard.soton.ac.uk so that we can get a full picture of site usage. \u00a0We use this information to help inform our upgrade processes e.g. how fast are people getting pages from our Blackboard server, from which countries are people using our Blackboard service, what are popular times for people to use Blackboard and so on. \u00a0We publish monthly summaries of this data on this blog.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

6) For staff: “Ten Top Tips for a Successful Start to the New Academic Year”<\/h2>\n

\"toptiops\"<\/p>\n

We have updated our Top Tips page for 2016\/17. \u00a0This includes important information about course rollover<\/strong> and making your course available to students<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Read our top tips page here:\u00a0http:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/isolutions\/computing\/elearn\/blackboard\/tips.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continue the new academic year and check if you have tried the features listed below – they may benefit your experience. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75418,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[471619,284875,471611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bb-2014","category-blackboard","category-random-tips","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75418"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1589,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions\/1589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/mle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}