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Blackboard Collaborate is a web-conferencing tool that is integrated with Desire2Learn.  You and your students can meet together in a Collaborate online room in order to conduct an online session or for more informal purposes like online office hours.  As the moderator of the session, you can upload PowerPoint slides, use the interactive whiteboard, demonstrate software using app sharing, or take students on a web tour.  Another benefit of the Collaborate online rooms is that sessions can be archived so that students can reference them on-demand.

You can access Collaborate by creating an Online Room within your Desire2Learn course.  Online Rooms are available under the Learning Tools drop down menu in your course navigation.  Additional support can be found on the IS&T website.

With Blackboard Collaborate  you can:

  • Conduct synchronous online meetings with your students, pull in guest speakers, hold review sessions, and archive your presentations
  • Hold online office hours
  • Record lectures when you are out of town or sick
  • Create collaboration areas for students

For more information on Collaborate, or other Cool Tools that solve pedagogical problems, contact the Exchange in Library South, room 106.

Please join us for one of the upcoming Cool Tools sessions in Collaborate.

2/18/14 – TurnItIn & GradeMark

Teach your students about plagiarism, find out how much of a student’s work was taken from outside sources, and learn about an easy and quick way to give students comments on the papers they submit via the D2L Dropbox.

2/25/14 – Polling Online and Face-to-face

Whether you are checking for understanding, assessing prior knowledge, or gauging student interest, polling in both face-to-face and online environments provides instantaneous, formative assessment that meaningfully inform your teaching.

3/4/14 – ThingLink

With this easy to use image annotation tool, you and your students can provide contextualized audio, video, text, and links that help to explain or add to a visual representation.

3/11/14 – VoiceThread

Peer review student work, debate, discuss, or problem-solve using the VoiceThread media-centric conversation space in the cloud.

3/25/14 – MindMeister and MindNode

Organize your thoughts on an idea or project using these easy-to-use mind mapping apps.  Users can explore ideas and the relationships that exist among them.

4/1/14 – Evernote, Skitch, and Penultimate

With Evernote, you can type, create reminders, and access them anywhere. With Skitch, you can take notes directly on images or pdf files. With Penultimate, you can take notes as if you were using a pen and paper, store them, and then, thanks to the tool’s handwriting analysis capabilities, search the text of your notes.  And, by leveraging the syncing capabilities of Evernote, you can view all of these products’ notes and annotations anywhere.

4/8/14 – Padlet, Lino, and Google Drawing

Are you looking for ways to encourage collaboration and interaction at a distance?  Padlet, Lino, and Google Drawings make it possible for your students to brainstorm, plan, and draw using shared online workspaces.

4/15/14 – Lynda.com

Members of the GSU community can access Lynda.com’s entire library of software and programming training at technology.gsu.edu/lynda.  Instructors seeking to integrate technology into their teaching can build playlists and then share them with their students, making it easier than ever to try something new.