I began this project by choosing Blackboard 5 because I continue to hear about Blackboard and was not aware of the program's capabilities. One of the most important features of blackboard is that you can track student progress as well as the number of times students have viewed a certain item. I think that this will be really beneficial in terms of helping me to assess if my students are going through assignments thoroughly, or just rushing to get done. I also think that it will be beneficial for me as a professor to utilize the announcements feature for my students. This will ensure that everyone is kept in the loop regarding any changes in assignments or special dates/deadlines. A few of the things that surprised me about blackboard are all of the administrator privileges such as deciding when students would be able to view certain assignments, creating external links for assignments, and the ability to communicate through group discussions and email.
The second tutorial that I chose to learn about was Inspiration. As a visual learner, I am extremely impressed with this program because it helps to organize your ideas using pictures and arrows to show correlations. Inspiration helps to tie things together through the mind maps and diagrams. I believe that this will be beneficial with my students because it provides a visual outline to assist with the completion of projects. Inspiration makes the brainstorming process easy and fun, because you are able to visually see the connections to your main idea or premise. A few of the things that surprised me about Inspiration were the rapid fire tool which adds ideas with links, and the ability to automatically connect arrows with symbols and pictures. Inspiration would be an excellent tool to utilize for PowerPoint presentations, term papers, budgeting, future plans, and as a daily agenda.
The last tutorial that I wanted to learn about was Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver can be used to create and maintain your own website. What I like most about Dreamweaver is that you have the ability to add and edit links to your page, and you can get files from your personal computer to add to your homepage so that students have access to the information. Users also have the opportunity to customize the way the links will look, and you can create quick links that can serve as a table of contents. I also like the administrator’s ability to create your own web address and background design. Dreamweaver gives you the ability to create large headings to draw the reader’s attention, and gives you the opportunity to change the text in the paragraph. What surprised me about Dreamweaver is that the program is very easy to navigate through and is very user friendly. It is a great program for a beginning or veteran web developer to organize a thorough and comprehensive web page.
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