Technology Training & Multimedia Development BOP101 Becoming a Blackboard Content Editor Power User When you are creating material in a Blackboard Content Area, you will be using the Content Editor interface. Many of its features will be familiar to you, but the editor also has some quirks that may leave you puzzled and frustrated. This guide will help you overcome some of these issues. In this lesson, you will: Become Familiar with the Interface Edit Tables Create Mashups Embed Multimedia Elements Add a Twitter Feed Add Images Using the Content Collection The Content Editor Interface Let s look at what you might see when you open up the Content Editor. At first glance, the editor doesn t seem to give you many tools you have basic text editing functions, bullet points, and the ability to add hyperlinks. Yet there s no need to worry if you click the button to the far right (the chevron ), the full menu appears.
You can see that you have many more tools, from text layout and characters to the ability to add multimedia, Mashups, and even html code and Cascading Spread Sheets. So don t panic when you don t see tools that you know are there there s just hidden. You will no doubt recognize most of the tool icons here from working in various productivity apps, such as Word. So you might be feeling confident all one has to do is copy and paste content already developed in Word, thereby effortlessly creating content in Blackboard. No fuss, no muss. But, unfortunately, that is exactly what you should not do. When you copy something from Word, you pick up a lot of unnecessary code, particularly formatting. When you add this to the Content Editor, some devilish things can happen. When you try to reformat the text with the text editor buttons, many times nothing happens. You try and try to fix the formatting, but to no avail. This will drive you crazy. You can open up the HTML code to fix the problems, but you will need some basic coding skills to make those fixes. It s better to start out with a clean slate. To start afresh, you need to do one of two things: Type the text directly into the Content Editor; or Copy text from Word into a text editor such as Notepad, then copy and paste the Notepad content into the Content Editor (any basic text editor will do) Notepad is available on your College computer under Accessories. If you have already created content, the second option is obviously your best bet. Working With Tables The first question you have to ask about tables is why you re using them. Do you want to use tables to organize the way your text and images look on a page, or are you actually presenting data that is best delivered in a table format? You may have grown accustomed to using tables for formatting purposes after all, a lot of web design used tables, and Word makes it easy to create useful and stylish tables. If your goal is stylish formatting and organization, do not use tables. Why not? Well, because complex tables create many difficulties in terms of accessibility. Screen readers can only read very simple tables well. The more complex the table, the more impossible for learners relying on assistive technology.
If you are legitimately using tables to organize data, then there are a few things to keep in mind. First, you need Row and Column headers that can be picked up by screen readers. So let s review briefly how you create a table in the Content Editor, then we ll examine how to create headers. You first click the Add Table icon, which opens up a menu where you set the parameters of the table. Here you create the table in terms of rows and columns, as well as the cell padding and spacing (cell padding is the space between the table border and the text, allowing you to avoid slamming the text up against the cell wall, while cell spacing determines how far apart the cells will reside). You can determine the width and height while Blackboard will create a scroll bar for very long tables, you might want to limit the width to about 800px to allow the table to be immediately visible. You then insert the table. Once you insert the table, you can add the text for the columns or rows, but this doesn t make them column or row headings. Remember, you need to specify the properties for screen readers, as the visible placement is not sufficient. So you must right click in a table cell, then choose either Table Column or Table Row Properties.
Then you should choose header from the dropdown menu. This will create the proper code for screen readers. In addition to code, you should also do your best to provide a descriptive summary of the table s content. Tell your learners what the table is meant to show in ways that will meaningfully frame the rows and columns of data. In an analogous way, you also need to provide a description when you use the built-in Math Editor in Blackboard. Unfortunately, screen readers don t currently read the math symbols, so you would need to provide a prose version of the equation. Adding a Mashup One of the most dynamic tools in the Content Editor gives you the ability to add Mashups. You may know the term mashup from other contexts, but Blackboard s use of the term merely suggests that you can combine different media in one Blackboard item. The menu provides easy access to a variety of media that either you have created or you ve discovered. The College provides some useful catalogs of content that can jazz up your content. You have six distinct media choices for your mashup: INTELECOM: video collections in a number of subject areas NBC Content: short videos from NBC s growing collection Flickr Photo: extensive photo collections whose licenses allow academic use SlideShare Presentation: a collection of slideshows that are available for us
Dropbox: a cloud storage application where you can save materials to be integrated into your Blackboard course. Let s first look at how to add a YouTube video. Once you click on YouTube, a page will appear where you can search for videos. You add a general search term and see what happens you ll be able to refine your search on the next screen, after you see the search results. You can filter the results in a handful of ways by relevance to your search term, by popularity, date of upload, and so on. Once you decide on a video, click select. This will present you with options for displaying the video within Blackboard. You have three options for your mashup: Thumbnail, Text Link with Player, and Embed Video. While each option serves to deliver the video to students, there is a considerable aesthetic difference between the different options:
These options are present for each media type. Personally, I m not crazy about the thumbnail or text link with player options, particularly when it comes to Flickr images (see below): So the Mashup functionality works pretty well when you re seeking to use someone else s content. It s easy to scour Flickr or YouTube for content you can potentially use. But, somewhat paradoxically, it can be more difficult to find your own content on YouTube or Flickr than some random contributor. At issue is metadata. To be able to find either your YouTube videos or your Flickr photos, you really need to have added identifiable metadata terms when you uploaded the assets. For example, don t think that you can just search your name to find content if you did not enter your name as a search term! Of course, you can find the YouTube embed code or download the Flickr image to your Content Collection, essentially bypassing the Blackboard search engine. But make it easy on yourself and add tags that will allow you to add content in a streamlined way. YouTube Flickr
Okay, so far so good. However, you have one more potential problem with your media mashup, and that s Closed Captioning. You should always ensure that you ve created closed captioning for your own YouTube videos, but you also need to verify that the video you ve found in your search has exercised the same due diligence. If not, the video is not usable, unless you want to provide your own captioning. Notice that there is no CC in the YouTube player indicating the presence of Closed Captioning. Embed Multimedia Elements Within the Content Editor, you can add HTML code, so if you are familiar with web design and can code, then you have the ability to customize your item. You can also set your item s styles by clicking the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) button. This only sets the CSS for this particular item, not the default settings, so it is valuable only when you are placing a lot of content in a single item. Even for those with limited coding ability, the ability to add HTML code allows you to add some wonderful learning objects, such as videos, Quizlet study sets, Prezis, and other commonly used programs. All you need is an embed code. Let s use Quizlet as an example. If you don t know Quizlet, you re missing out on a valuable tool. Quizlet creates flashcards that students can study any time of the day, on computers and mobile
devices, as well as learning competitions. To embed a Quizlet set, you would find the embed code and copy it to your clipboard. In the Content Editor, you would click the HTML button and paste the embed code. Click Update, and your Quizlet will appear. You would use the same procedure when adding a Sway, a Prezi, a YouTube video, or any element with an embed code. The results can be stunning.
Adding a Twitter Feed Another way you can utilize HTML code is to add a Twitter feed. This can be your academic Twitter account, where you let your class follow you and participate in your academic interests. It can also be any public Twitter feed, such as the Museum of Modern Art s feed in the example below. Instructions First, log into Twitter. You should then write down the user name for the feed that you will use in setting up your widget. Go to https://twitter.com/settings/widgets/new and enter the Twitter username. Click the 'Create widget' button, then grab the embed code generated by Twitter. Drop the code into the HTML editor. Remember, don t simply drop the code into the Content Editor. This will only display the code itself, not the object. Here s how the feed looks in Blackboard:
Adding an Image On the surface, nothing could be easier than adding an image in the Content Editor. You click the Add Image button, then click Browse to find the image on your computer. You add an image description and title (needed to make the image accessible), and then choose the Appearance tab to alter the image size, add a border, and so on. However, this is not the process you should follow. Instead, instead of browsing your computer to find your image file, you should have already placed your image in the Content Collection.
You may have not been introduced to the Content Collection, which is a method of uploading and storing your images that is much more efficient and flexible than uploading your images directly. Click the images below to review how to use the Content Collection. Introduction Uploading Files