October 3, 2007 | In
How-To
,
Helper Software
The popular bFree application has been revised to extract far more material from a Blackboard course archive, and to make your exploration and use of that material easier.
The program now extracts Announcements; Discussion Board entries, archives, and attachments; Digital Drop Box and File Exchange uploads. It continues to extract wiki entries and attachments, Staff Information and attachments, and Content Area pages, including folders, descriptions, links, and attached files of all kinds. Note that Tests, Gradebook, Surveys, Assignments, Pools are among the content not yet supported.
bFree will quickly create an independent web site that mimics the structure of the original Blackboard course. The site can be placed on a web server or CD, or even loaded into other Learning Management Systems like Sakai.
The interface now displays previews along with the course outline, and provides a larger area for previews. All texts, titles, names, and descriptions can be searched to locate materials of interest. All the features of bFree are documented within bFree itself.
bFree is available, free of charge, at: http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/
A document detailing version changes is here: http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/bFreeChanges.rtf
(The bFree application is © Copyright 2006-2007 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.
Your suggestions and comments are welcome; send them to David_Moffat@unc.edu.)
April 4, 2007 | In
How-To
,
Helper Software
The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Information Technology Services' Teaching and Learning division has developed a new application and is making it available to the education community. bFree is a course extractor that makes a stand-alone website from any Blackboard course content. While maintaining the organization of the original Blackboard course content, bFree creates a freestanding website or a folder hierarchy.
With bFree, course content authors can:
-- Conveniently retrieve course materials previously available only in Blackboard
-- Produce independent course websites with the same content and structure as the original course embedded in Blackboard
-- Apply a cascading style sheet (CSS) to customize the look and feel of their freestanding site
-- Easily distribute and share course content files with others
To learn more about bFree or to download the program, go to
http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree.
bFree is copyrighted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/). Under this license's conditions, non-commercial users are free to copy, adapt, distribute, and transmit the work.
November 6, 2006 | In
How-To
,
Helper Software
You can now set up your cell phone to receive the announcements of you Blackboard course sites via TXT message. For more information and support visit
Rave @ UNC.
Rave@UNC is a pilot program between
Rave Wireless and the
Department of Technology & Systems Support in the
Division of Student Affairs. Funding for the pilot has been provided by the
Department of Housing & Residential Education,
University Career Services and UNC's
Kenan-Flagler Business School.
October 4, 2006 | In
How-To
,
Helper Software
You can now upload scantron test grades automatically into Blackboard. Make sure to request from the exam scanning service a bb.csv electronic file of the test results. This is the file you will need to upload the scantron test results into Blackboard. For step by step directions, please see:
How do I upload scantron grades to Blackboard's Gradebook?
March 3, 2005 | In
How-To
,
Helper Software
Using Blackboard to set up tests and surveys is often a frustrating and time-consuming process. With newly-licensed desktop software, Respondus, instructors and instructional staff can design Blackboard assessments much more easily outside of Blackboard and then publish to the system. Along with its fairly intuitive interface, Respondus has design, publishing, and reporting features that both veteran and novice Blackboard users will appreciate.
Learn more about Respondus and download a copy at no cost, if you are a current UNC-Chapel Hill employee, instructor, or teaching assistant. (ITS has purchased a campus-wide site license).
