Blackboard was upgraded last month to provide users with better performance and reliability. Get comfortable with the recent changes by reading our tips and solutions for some common tasks. These are the top things you need to know: The editor is more powerful, allows for distraction-free writing, dispels with the formatting nightmares of recent past, and allows you to make accessible materials easily.The date management tool interface has changed.Adding images, or anything you have stored on your local drive, is both a few more clicks and much…

What am I reading right now? Jim Butcher 17/17: Battle Ground (on my Kindle) - ordered 10/8 and started! Done 10/12!16/17: Peace Talks (Finished last week or so). What else? Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swensen mysteries including:3. Blueberry Muffin Murder2. Strawberry Shortcake Murder: A Hannah Swensen Mystery What else?While this was late June or early July, I ATE The Union Street Bakery and Sweet Expectations by Mary Ellen Taylor

As an instructional designer, I help faculty with their courses. The faculty member is the content expert; I'm a support person. I want to help them make the course easy to navigate, engaging to the student—learning can be fun—and, whenever possible, inspire or remind the teacher why he or she loves doing this. In early 2014 I asked a faculty member to remember his favorite assignment from when he was in school. His face lit up immediately; he got excited and told me all about it. Then…

I've joked a bit about being a brand new homeschooling mom. However, that's not really what is happening. ICS, Immaculate Conception School, in Fairbanks where my son is in first grade is doing an AMAZING job of providing resources, a layout of what is due each day of every week including links to videos, audio files, sheets to print out for practice. Ah, print out... what if you don't have a printer? Well, you can use a regular piece of paper. Plus he has workbooks for math,…