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Blackboard
The OCM BOCES’ Blackboard Learning System allows you to create a VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT that extends your classroom work and allows you to engage your students anyplace, at any time of the day. By using authenticating IDs and passwords, you and your students can interact in ways that cannot be done on standard "public" web pages. While using this system, you and your students are engaging in activities that are done today's higher education institutions AND in today's workplaces!
Our Blackboard system provides 4 main areas of support to you and your students:
Content management
Information about your classes, rules, timelines and actual handouts and assignments, appropriate Web resources, and publisher-provided digital material can all be placed online for students to get from any web-enabled computer. With guest access allowed, even parents can see what material is being used in your classroom. For elementary classes, the parents are often the audience, whereas older students are experiencing document exchange as they will experience it in college and the workplace.
Communication
Email, discussion, blog, podcast, wiki and chat tools can be provided for interaction ONLY among members of your class and you, always under your control. These tools can be used for ongoing (asynchronous) discussions, or for real-time (synchronous) chats and training previously arranged. Conversations can be extended beyond the classroom when students want to say more than they have time to say in the class period. All this happens only in the context of your classroom course support site.
Assignments and Assessments
Worksheets can be exchanged between you and your students and automatically land in the gradebook for review/grading. You can develop tests and quizzes to be taken online which are instantly scored for students to see what they did. Your online gradebook is instantly updated and easily modifiable. Surveys can also be done online.
Control
All activities above are established and controlled by you, and you do not have to worry about “web page” development, but can devote time to put content where students can reach it on the Web. You, the professional, control what happens in your course site, without the need for outside intervention from a “web master’.
A virtual learning environment (VLE) is a standardized, computer-based environment that supports the delivery of web-based learning and facilitates on-line interaction between students and teachers. A VLE might consist of a variety of components designed both to assist in conventional classroom learning as well as support distance learners gaining remote access to an institution’s course and assessment materials. Functions and activities offered and supported by a VLE might include:
· importing and/or creating course materials
· the delivery of course materials
· on-line interactions between students and tutors
· on-line tracking and assessment of students’ progress.
VLEs are generally browser-based, providing teachers, students and parents with easy access from any computer with an internet connection. Most browser-based systems are password-protected to offer a secure, closed environment and to prevent unauthorized third-party access. Some products may require additional software such as plug-ins or CD-ROMs on end users' computers in order to access digitally-held course materials. Applications such as word processing, presentation and spreadsheet tools may also be required for carrying out on-line class activities or assignments generated via the system.
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