Ten Blackboard Tools You Might Not be Familiar With, But Definitely Should Try:

Adaptive release allows you to set certain requirements before a content folder, item, assignment, test, etc, is viewable by the student user. These requirements can be scoring a certain amount of points on a quiz, reviewing a document or completing an assignment. The best thing to do is indicate which content items in your course are required to meet certain criteria, to prevent confusion.

Grade Center is a beneficial tool even if your course activities all take place face to face. Create columns and enter their grades. Notify by email anyone that has missed an assignment. Create various calculated columns that expedite final grade calculations.  

Journals, as the name implies, lets you create entries for various days (or even the same day) and it is a good tool for reflecting on what the student has learned.

Retention Center this tool allows you to track student activity, grade performance, missed deadlines, and alert you if students are meeting expectations or not. It allows you to communicate with students, and their advisors or observers, if it was necessary.

Surveys allow you to get your students feedback by having them answer different types of questions. They work similar to exams, but answers cannot be graded as right or wrong. Results can then be accessed from the Grade Center.

Wikis allow participants to add content to its pages almost simultaneously. They will also be able to review the change history and revert to previous versions. As an instructor you can see which students participated the most and award them accordingly.

Date Management has two options, the first option lets you move dates by using the starting date of the course; the second option, lets you view all items with dates and modify them from a table interface. This is a great tool to use when copying content from an older course to a new one in a different semester.

Calendars the tool pulls some information from your course and marks due dates and the availability end date for assignments and assessments. Adding the tool to the navigation menu allows students to view upcoming deadlines.

Groups a tool that allows you to split your class into smaller teams. Group creation can be manually done by the instructor or randomly selected. Groups can submit assignments together, collaborate within discussion boards, create their own wikis, journals, and blogs. Groups also allow for more advanced grading options, within the grade center.

Portfolios let students add multiple documents into a central area. Documents can be homework the student has submitted to demonstrate progress throughout the semester. It can also be a themed project, where the student has multiple assignments (yet to be graded) attached to the portfolio.

If you any of these tools caught your attention, you can check our training calendar, make a training request for a group of faculty, or schedule one-on-one time with a blackboard instructional design team member.  

Adding Safe Senders in Outlook

If you would like to add an individual sender (person@example.com) or sender's domain (like @example.com) to your Safe Senders list in Outlook, you can quickly accomplish this task with the following steps:

1)  From the Home menu, navigate to Junk > Junk Email Options

2)  Click the Safe Senders tab and then click Add...

3)  Type in the sender's email address or domain name and click Ok.

4)  Additionally, you can check boxes to trust e-mail from your Contacts and/or automatically add people that you email to the Safe Senders list.

Compare Two Versions of a Document in Word

In this post, we share how two or more documents can be compared in Microsoft Word to determine the changes and differences between them.

To begin, open Microsoft Word and start a new document.

Click the Review tab at the top of the page and then click the drop-down under Compare.

Browse to the Original document and the Revision of the document.  Once this is complete, click OK.

Microsoft Word then compares the documents and makes note of all the changes that exist between the two documents.

Microsoft Office 2016 New Features List

Computers labs and new computers currently being distributed have been updated with Microsoft Office 2016. We have compiled a few of the new features to take advantage of with this new update.

Outlook offers additional ribbon buttons.

You can archive items in Outlook with a single click by using the Archive button. You also have new buttons to browse or add new groups.

Mentions

In Outlook you can capture someone’s attention quickly by using this new feature. When crafting an email or calendar invitation, type the @ symbol and the first few letters of the person’s name into the body of the message.

Smart Lookup Offers Extra Information

Highlight any parts of the text and use the Bing-powered Smart Lookup feature to bring search results from the web. 

Excel 2016 Has New Charts

New types of charts to represent data graphically are included in this release. One such example is the treemap chart, which can be found in Insert > Insert Hierarchy Chart > Treemap.

Zoom for PowerPoint

This new feature lets you move to different slides and sections of your presentation quickly. Summary Zoom puts the pieces of each slide you select into a single slide. Slide Zoom lets you navigate slides in any order you choose. Section Zoom allows you to pop back to previous sections easily.

Do you know of other exciting or useful features that didn't make the list? Leave a comment below!

Inserting the Date and Time in Microsoft Word

Sometimes in a document, users may need to insert the current date and time.  When using the same document in later occurrences, a user may want that date and time to automatically update. 

In Microsoft Word, the current date and time can be inserted in a number of different formats.

To accomplish this, the following steps should be followed:

1.  Open Microsoft Word

2.  Navigate to the desired location of the Date and Time.

3.  Click the Insert tab in the Ribbon

4.  Click the Date & Time option, which will allow a variety of formats for selection

5.  Click the Update automatically box so that it will update any time the document is opened.

6.  Click Ok.

Edit and Fill Forms with PDFescape

Employees who work in office settings may often be asked to print out a PDF form, fill it out, and then turn it in to the designated recipient.

Depending on your handwriting, the availability of a printer, and other factors, you may seek an alternative to hand writing the information that is requested on the form and then scanning it.

As a convenience to users, some forms are converted to fillable forms which allow the fields to be easily typed in the respective places, but what if that is not the case?

One way to still have the ability to type on forms is to use a website called PDFescape.com.

With the site, you can Upload PDFs that are less than 10 megabytes and 100 pages with the ability to open the PDF files, edit them, and fill out fields on the form.

To access the FREE software, visit https://www.pdfescape.com/ and click the Free Online button.

Upon clicking the Free Online button, users can choose to  Upload a PDF or load a PDF from the Internet.

From there, the menu allows the ability to insert text, images, freehand drawing and more.  Once the additions and modifications are made to the PDF, it can then be saved and used as desired.

Math in Microsoft Word?

When it comes to Microsoft Word, most people only think about its word processing capability.  There are also other features that can be used as well.  One of those features is calculating Math Equations.

While in a document, the Calculate command can be added to the Quick Access Toolbar.

From the File menu, navigate to Options.
 
Click the link for Quick Access Toolbar and then select All Commands from the "Choose commands from" drop-down.

Select Calculate from the list and then click Add to move the command to the Quick Access Toolbar.

 

Once you click "Ok", you can then type a mathematical equation in your document, highlight it, and then click the Calculate.

The answer appears near the bottom of your screen.