Random Thoughts

It has been a frustrating semester technology-wise.  I have one course set up on a wiki and blog.  One course is not really using technology except to turn assignments in on Blackboard.  The other two use Blackboard to some degree or another almost every day.  After a terrible start to the semester, my students could finally all get on Blackboard.  Then they couldn’t access their university email.  Then they could get on both.  Then they could not access certain functions of Blackboard (like uploading assignments).  This semester has really made me think about going strictly to a wiki/blog environment for my classes.  So far they have consistently been available to the students.  I don’t even want to think about what I would do if that ceases to be an option.

I have tried to be patient, but this is ridiculous.  When I last complained to tech people at school, they indicated that if I don’t stick it out and get past this learning curve, I’ll never be able to use it.  I tried explaining that it wasn’t the learning curve that was bothering me; it was the fact that nothing works consistently.  I know there is more I can learn about everything.  I am willing to learn.  But when my students and I can’t use the technology because it doesn’t work, I can’t see much reason to stick with it.

Sorry for the rant.  I needed to get it out of my system.

I have decided that I will not use Blackboard this summer — although I will get the students on it if I can so they can see what it looks like.  It will save time in August if some of them already know.  They will need it for their other classes.

Anyway, you can find one of the classes here.  Most of it is on a wiki, and the rest I am adding here.  I did not set the grammar and vocabulary assignments up for the wiki or the blog, so I am not sure how this will work.  I know that I want them to do it on the computer rather than printing it all out.  So for now, it is blog pages and links to files.  I will have to think about how to do this more efficiently.  But for now, I am happy.

Of course, at this time, my students are only sending me their work.  They are not going to post to blogs.  In the fall, they will each have their own blog, and they will post most assignments there.  But for now, this is a start . And  I don’t have to mess with the mess that is Blackboard.

As a follow-up to my last post about Blackboard, I thought I would mention that I have spent 2 of the last 4 hours of class trying to get my students access to the course they are taking.  With all that, it will take 24-48 hours for their accounts to be activated. This is a 4 week course.  It will be 1/4 of the way over before they ever see Blackboard.   I think I am going to remove the couple things I was going to have students do there and just forget it.

While I was talking to support people about this today, I was unable to access my own account.  I could log in, and I could see my list of course, but I could not access them.  It is ridiculous.

An article on Inside Higher Ed about Blackboard’s annual user meeting mentions some of the issues I have seen and heard of with Blackboard.  The writer says

The questioner said that when small fixes aren’t made, faculty members get discouraged. Another commenter told the Blackboard executives that it becomes difficult to argue to top level university administration that Blackboard is a “mission-critical” system when it continues to break in key places.

I have had a number of litle problems since starting to use Blackboard.  Earlier this week, for instance, I couldn’t upload documents from my computer to my Blackboard shell.  It just gave me an error message and wouldn’t give me the window to do it from.  It got fixed the same day, but is that good enough?

The comments on the article are interesting.  Read the first one by Michael.  I could have written it myself.  I especially like the line:

Blackboard is the equivalent of AOL and Facebook; a proprietary system that walls out users or, in this case, students and other faculty.

I really like the idea of having my stuff be available to others.  It isn’t if I only use Blackboard. I continue to use a mix of wiki, blog and Blackboard.  It works for me.  But I would be happier using wiki, blog and Moodle!