Monthly Archives: August 2016

Fall Technology Bootcamp Recap

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Last Thursday, eLIS welcomed over 20 Lesley instructors to our Fall Bootcamp: Teaching and Learning with Technology. We covered a wide array of topics, helping participants think about approaches to integrating technology into their teaching as well as practice using some of the available technology tools.

Designing a Blended Experience
This session provided a guiding framework for creating a blended course by defining and delineating the two interwoven themes of learning design and technology integration.
Designing Blended Learning Experiences

Using myLesley (Blackboard)
A myLesley (Blackboard) course site is available for all Lesley courses, whether held fully online, face-to-face, or somewhere in between. You may use myLesley to post your syllabus, post resources and readings, communicate with your students, collect and grade assignments and much more. Based on participant interest, we had a couple of breakout sessions, covering a variety of topics from basic myLesley navigation and tools to grading.
Using the myLesley Text/Content Editor
Communicating Within Your myLesley Course
Adding Content to Your myLesley Course
Creating and Managing Assignments in myLesley
Grading myLesley Assignments
myLesley Grade Center and Grading

VoiceThread
VoiceThread is an asynchronous tool which allows you to place collections of media like images, videos, and presentations at the center of a conversation. People may then be invited to view, comment, and interact with the VoiceThread using any mix of text, audio, and video. In this session we walked through creating and commenting on VoiceThreads.
What is a VoiceThread Anyway?
Creating a VoiceThread
Additional VoiceThread Resources

Adding Video to Your Course with Kaltura Media
Kaltura Media is the university’s media sharing platform, allowing users to share video securely within the myLesley course environment. In this session we walked through recording a webcam video using Kaltura Media.
Recording a Video in myLesley
Webcam Recording Tips
Additional Kaltura Resources

For those that were unable to attend last week’s training, we will be hosting another training on Thursday, September 8th, focusing on using the features of myLesley (Blackboard) most essential for supporting teaching and learning in the classroom. Stay tuned for the official announcement, including a link to register for the event.

Reminder: Goodbye Voice Tools

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Blackboard will discontinue the Voice Authoring tools on August 31, 2016.This set of tools includes Voice Authoring, Voice Board, Voice Podcaster, and Voice Email.

You can get all the whats and whys from our previous Goodbye Voice Tools post. Most importantly, if there is any content you wish to save, be sure to export it and save it to your computer before the end date. This tutorial will guide you through the process: Exporting and Importing Voice Authoring Content.

If you need assistance transitioning your content to other tools or archiving your Voice Authoring content, please email elis@lesley.edu. Remember the shut down date is August 31, 2016.

Add Office Mix Presentations to Your myLesley Course

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Office Mix is a new add-in for Powerpoint that allows users to create interactive online videos that include images, video, voice, digital annotations, and quizzes. Watch the Mix below and see how to get started. Then check out the Office Mix Gallery to see how others are using Office Mix.

 

How Can I Get Office Mix?

Office Mix is a free add-in for PowerPoint, but it is PC only. Sorry Mac folks. It also requires Powerpoint 2013 or later.

Download the installer to get started. 

 

How Do I Add a Mix to My Course?
AddMixToolAdding a Mix to your myLesley course is an easy two-step process.

Start by navigating to an area of your course. Click on the Tools menu and select Office Mix.

Enter a Name for your Mix and an optional Description. Then click Submit

 

Next, navigate to the Mix at the bottom of the window. Click on the title as if you were going to view it.
MyOfficeMix

Enter the URL for the Mix you want to add and click Find.AddMixURL

 

 

 

 

Click Yes to confirm this is the Mix you want to add.ConfirmMix

 

 

 

 

Learn More…

Learn more about creating Office Mix videos with these tutorials: https://mix.office.com/gallery/category/how-to?lcid=1033

 

 

Getting Ready for the Fall

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It’s that time of year again. Summer is winding down and the first day of Fall classes is approaching… too fast. We’ve gathered together some past posts and links to tutorials to make your prep easier and your myLesley course awesome.

Getting Your Content into Your Fall Course
The first step is to get your content into your upcoming myLesley course site. If you’ve taught the course before using myLesley, there’s no reason to recreate all that content from scratch. Just copy it. Review the directions for copying myLesley courses or request a course copy from eLIS.  

Once your content has been copied over, you will need to make a few updates for the current semester, such as updating your syllabus and updating all those dates. You can easily update your syllabus and all the links to it throughout the course in one easy step. Review Updating Your Syllabus in myLesley to learn how.

Did you use the calendar tool, release dates, or due dates in your myLesley course? Think going through and manually updating them all is going to be a major task? Think again. Use the Date Management tool and update them all on one page.

Check out Adding Content to Your myLesley Course to update or create new content items.

 

Communicating with Your Students
Now that your course content is ready go, it’s time to welcome your students. If you use Announcements or the Send Email tool in myLesley, you don’t even need to know their email addresses. Communicate with everyone in the course at once.

Take the normal text announcement or email up a notch and post a video announcement to introduce yourself and the course. Kaltura Media is built right into the text editor and will allow you to quickly and easily record a video message to your students using your webcam.

 

A Few Tips
To help you get ready for the upcoming semester, we have a few tips from our instructional designers on what to do before your course begins, the first week of your online course, and how to manage those busy online discussions.

Don’t forget about our support site at support.lesley.edu. We have a slew of tutorials and information from both eLIS and IT. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, submit a ticket and someone will follow up to help.

Have a great semester.