5 Tips to Create Strong Passwords- Good Guide for Teachers and Students

Passwords are the keys to unlocking the world of technology but these keys, if not meticulously selected, can pose  real safety issues to our online identity. With all the hacking and phishing that is taking place in the world wide web, it behoves us as teachers and educators to instruct our kids on the importance of using strong passwords.

Be it to open an account in a social media platform or to access one's emails, passwords are always used on almost a daily basis. Students need to know that passwords are not only a combination of numbers we tend to remember the most, but are also the lock to our online identity  and unless we have a secured lock, our virtual selves become easy preys to hackers.

The infographic below provides some stats on the use of passwords and features some popular and not recommended examples of passwords but most importantly, and this is why I am sharing it with you here, it provides some useful tips on how to choose strong passwords. Please have a look and share with your students.



This is a repost of  the blog at: 5 Tips to Create Strong Passwords- Good Guide for Teachers and Students ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

 

For your safety, Please do not leave your SU password to the initial value. Reset it to something safer! If you need assistance stop by the Help Desk (helpdesk@su.edu or 540.665.5555). You can also find instructions on resetting your SUNet password here and your Google email password here.

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Bb Key to the Community Award

Each year Blackboard, Inc  (Bb) holds an annual users conference known as BbWorld in July. This years, three day conference consist of 255 live presentations, a high tech & educational based exhibit hall, and 9,000 minutes of inspiration. For the past three years SU has been honored to have staff and faculty attend the conference. Additionally, these staff and faculty members have presented on several topics to the 2000+ attendees. 

This year George Hoffman, Pamela Smulovitz, Mary Gardiner, and Melissa Stange will be representing the University. Past attendees have included Des Lawless and  Wanida Wanant. George will be moderating a Birds Of A Feather session and lead a VaBug member session. Melissa will be doing three presentations on Social Learning, Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI), and user responsibility. This year George Hoffman will also be serving as one of the six BbWorld VIP Bloggers! 

Last year Quaiser Absar and Institutional Computing were awarded a Blackboard Catalyst Award for Mobile Innovations. Read more here.  In 2011, George Hoffman & Melissa Stange were awarded a Blackboard Catalyst Award for Community Collaboration. Additionally, in 2011 Melissa's BbSupport leadership was also awarded a Catalyst Award in the area of Staff Development. 

This year SU has the opportunity to bring home another award through Melissa's work within the Bb community, she has been nominated for the Key to the Community Award. Melissa is SU's Blackboard Systems Administrator, servers as SU's Blackboard Idea Exchange (BIE) coordinator, actively participates in Product Development Programs, Bb Usability Studies, Bb Learning Cohorts, Bb's Beta program, serves on Bb's Bug Squad, and was one of two BbWorld 2012 VIP Bloggers. Melissa also coordinates Listening sessions for students with Blackboard representatives and was one of the co-founders of the regional Bb users group known as VaBUG. 

The award is the first ever Key to the Community Award.  According to Bb's website, the award will recognized clients who go above and beyond the call of duty to support, share, and contribute to the success of their peers and colleagues in the Blackboard Learn and Blackboard Collaborate client community.   Twenty three individuals have been nominated for the Key to the Community Award. Six winners will win the award. The winners will be awarded based on votes received from the Bb community.  So please, don’t waste any time and help Melissa bring the award home to SU, vote today! Voting ends on Monday, July 1st at 11:59pm ET.

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Infographics, Chrome Browser Tips, & Opportunity To Become A Instructor

Infographics are interesting–a mash of easily to understand visuals (symbols, shapes, & images) and added relevant character-based data (numbers, words, & brief sentences). Most all faculty have used an infographic at least ones to help explain a topic. So check with your instructor to see if you can use one to complete assignments. Often faculty are open to the format of an assignment, as long as the requested content is included. Click here to learn about 46 tools for creating infographics and add some creativity to your course work. Remember what Napoleon Bonaparte said "a picture is worth a thousand words".

Firefox is the recommend browser of use with Blackboard (Bb) here at Shenandoah University (SU), many students prefer to us the Chrome browser. Chrome is the free browser from Google and since SU uses the Google for Education Application suite, it make sense that Chrome is used a lot at SU. Click here to learn about 15 extensions that can be used within Chrome to make student task easier to complete. You will learn Chrome shortcuts and how to: 

• save you items as PDF files
• open Google docs, presentations, & spreadsheets write in Chrome
• use a to do list
• source citing tool
• take quick notes online
• track your time
• tips to stay focused on completing assignments
• spelling & grammar checkers 
• panic buttons and much more

Do you consider yourself a "subject matter expert" or  enthusiast/hobbyist about a topic? If so, click here to learn more about how to teach an online course for Udemy. Udemy has launched a summer grant program to encourage new teachers to join their ranks. The grant will award $5,000 plus 100 percent course revenues for life.

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Discussion Board Tips For Students

Have you ever been in a class and be required to use the Blackboard (Bb) discussion board? The  discussion board tool itself has evolved over to give you more creativity and control of the why you present the content to complete the task. If you need help using the discussion board tool you can, (1) get text instructions at the SU Blackboard Support page, (2) watch the videos within the SU Atomic Learning site, (3) look at Bb's On Demand support site for students, (4) check out Bb's Help Wiki just for students, (5) send an email to bbsupport@su.edu from you SU email, (6) or practice within the open student Bb course within the "Help & Support" button on course menus.

The key to successfully successfully completing a discussion board requirement is not just knowing how to use the tool. You should review the grading rubric within for the discussion board to better understand how your grade will be calculated and what key items must be included in the post. The final task is to collect the content and right the discussion board post. Below are 5 tips that may help you make quality submissions.

1. Firstly, be sure to read all the submissions by your classmates. Most learning platforms, like Blackboard, give your instructor and option to see which students have read what. However, please don’t approach an online forum with the reduced mindset that you HAVE to participate and that I am checking up on your level of engagement, because then in reality you will lose sight of the point of the exercise. For example, if you were in a brick and mortar classroom you would “hear’ all the comments, so why wouldn’t you read all the comments in an online class? The more you participate in the forum the more you will get out of it. Also note that Bb now allows instructors to require you to submit your discussion board post BEFORE you can read your classmates submissions.

2. Despite what I just said please recognize that an online forum does not translate exactly to a discussion in a traditional class. Because the discussion board is asynchronous the responsibility is on all the members of the class to make sure that the conversation flows, and this only happens if students buy into the assessment and do the work.

3. When you are commenting on the posts of your classmates, stay away from the “That’s a good point, Joe.” Or “I agree, Sue.” Those types of comments good places to start but please do not end there. Give your fellow classmates feedback and tell them why it is a good point or how it resonated with you. Put yourself in the role of your teacher and critically evaluate the post of your classmate by providing substantive feedback in the form of a detailed and well thought out response. Peer feedback is the most powerful kind! In addition to assisting your classmates it will help you learn how to critically evaluate a piece of writing. This is a life skill that will serve you long after you leave the classroom.

4. Remember that an online forum is meant to be a discussion, so always respond to those classmates that respond to your original posts. This develops community and rapport and quite frankly it is the polite thing to do. You wouldn’t ignore someone if they spoke to you, would you?

5. Finally, feel free to discuss your opinions on the topic, but always remember to be respectful of different positions that maybe voiced. If your opinion is backed up by facts, be sure to reference your sources appropriately. Some discussion boards are designed to not have a right or wrong answer whereas others ask for research to support a position. Be sure to recognize the difference and respond accordingly. 

Faculty use discussion board forums to assist in learning, assess understanding of content, and expect the contributions from students to be worthwhile and meaningful!

Note: The five tips were taken from http://www.edudemic.com/2013/06/5-online-discussion-tips-for-students/

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Video Everywhere and Image Style Options

More information about things you can now do with the Blackboard (Bb) Learn content editor. 

Video Everywhere is part of the content editor -
Within the content editor, faculty and students may record a video directly into Blackboard using the new Video Everywhere feature. Video Everywhere utilizes YouTube for video storage; therefore you must have or create a YouTube* channel prior to using this feature. Videos will be set to unlisted which means anyone with the link may view the video. Unlisted videos do not appear in YouTube public spaces or search results.

Access in any content editor by clicking the Video Everywhere icon *Create a YouTube account with your student Gmail account. Log into to your email at sumail.su.edu  → select YouTube (on ribbon or More Menu at top of screen) → click Sign In → create your channel

Style options for images -

One of these options included expanding the style option available for images. This includes the ability to change the alignment, dimensions in proportion, vertical space, horizontal space, border, and other style features.

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New Student Tool Added To Bb!

Students, have you ever wanted to tell all your instructors the same message? Until now you had to send each instructor a separate email. This involved you having to copy & paste the text into each email. Doing this within Bb, so you did not memorize each instructors email address, was time consuming because you had to go into each course, click on the send email tool, select to send to the course instructor, and hit submit. 

 
The new Qwickly module, which is located on the "Academics" tab within Blackboard (Bb) Learn now contains a Student Tool that allows students to email all instructors of multiple courses at once.

Simply click in the box in front of the course you want the message to go to the instructor or click on the "select all" link. Type a subject and your message, then hit submit. All instructors listed on the course will get your message. 

The next time you are going to miss class, use Qwickly to notify all your instructors!

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Quick Tips: Blackboard Content Editor Basics

The Content Editor has been redesigned to improve your experience adding text and other digital  content to your Blackboard course. The new content editor has two view modes: simple mode
and advanced mode. 

Basic Information - 

By default text is formatted to 12-point, left-justified, Arial. Multiple methods available to add, format, and edit text and objects: content editor functions, right-click contextual menu, and keyboard shortcuts.

Change the mode by clicking the double arrow in the upper-right corner of the content editor. 

Simple Mode Buttons:

The following table defines each function.

Function	Description
	Bold the selected text.
	Italicize the selected text.
	Underline the selected text.
	Select the font face for the text. Click the down arrow next to the displayed current font to select from a list of all available fonts.
	Select the size of the text. Click the down arrow next to the displayed current font size to select from a list of all available font sizes.
	Set the text color. Click the down arrow to select a different text color.
	Create a bulleted list. To learn more, see Working With Lists.
	Create a numbered list. To learn more, see Working With Lists.
	Begin the automatic spell check. Click the down arrow to select a different language. To learn more, see Using the Spell Checker.
	Add a new or edit an existing hyperlink. To learn more, see Using the Link Function.
	Remove a hyperlink from the selected text or object.
	Opens a preview window showing how the content will appear after submitting.
	Open the context editor help information pop-up display.
	Expand the content editor window to fill the entire browser frame.
	Access the advanced content editor features.

Advanced Mode Buttons -

The following tables describe each function.

Row 1 Functions	Description
	Bold the selected text.
	Italicize the selected text.
	Underline the selected text.
	Display text with a horizontal line through the letters (strikethrough).
	Select a paragraph style for the text. Click the down arrow next to the displayed current style to select from a list of all available styles.
	Select the font face for the text. Click the down arrow next to the displayed current font to select from a list of all available fonts.
	Select the size of the text. Click the down arrow next to the displayed current font size to select from a list of all available font sizes.
	Create a bulleted list. To learn more, see Working With Lists.
	Create a numbered list. To learn more, see Working With Lists.
	Set the text color. Click the down arrow to select a different text color.
	Set the text highlight (background) color. Click the down arrow to select a different highlight color.
	Remove all formatting, leaving only the plain text.
	Opens a preview window showing how the content will appear after submitting.
	Opens the context editor help window.
	Expand the content editor window to fill the entire browser frame.
	Collapse functions to one row of the most used text formatting functions.

Row 2 Functions	Description
	Cut the selected items.
	Copy the selected items.
	Paste the most recently copied or cut items.
	Search for and replace text. To learn more, see Using Find and Replace.
	Undo the previous action.
	Redo the previous action—available only if an action has been undone.
	Align text to the left margin.
	Align text in the center.
	Align text to the right.
	Align text to both the left and right margins.
	Move the text or object to the right (indent). Click again to indent further.
	Move the text or object to the left (outdent). Click again to outdent further. You cannot outdent text beyond the left margin.
	Make the text into a superscript.
	Make the text into a subscript.
	Add a new or edit an existing hyperlink. To learn more, see Using the Link Function.
	Remove a hyperlink from the selected text or object.
	Enter text to the right of the current mouse pointer location (default).
	Enter text to the left of the current mouse pointer location.
	Add a thin horizontal line to the current mouse pointer position, spanning the entire width of the text area.
	Add a thin centered line, setting width, height relative to the current mouse pointer position, and whether to use shadows. To learn more, see Inserting Lines and Horizontal Rules.
	Insert a nonbreaking space character at the current mouse pointer position.
	Begin the automatic spell check. Click the down arrow to select a different language. To learn more, see Using the Spell Checker.

Row 3 Functions	Description
	Add a link to a file in the text box. The Insert Content Link window appears. You can link to the following file types: DOC, DOCX, EXE, HTML, HTM, PDF, PPT, PPTX, PPS, PPSX, TXT, WPD, .XLS, XLSX, and ZIP. You can link to a file from your computer, from Course Files, the Content Collection, or a URL.
	Embed an image in the text box or edit an existing selected image. The Insert/Edit Image window appears. You can add the following file types: GIF, JPG, JPEG, BMP, PNG, and TIF. You can add images from your computer, from Course Files or the Content Collection, or a URL. To learn more, see Adding Images.
	Embed a media clip in the text box or edit an existing selected media object. TheInsert/Edit Media window appears. From the Type drop-down list, select the type of media you want to add: Flash (default), HTML 5 video, QuickTime, Shockwave, Windows Media, Real Media, lframe, and Embedded Audio. You can add media files from your computer, from Course Files or the Content Collection, or a URL. To learn more, see Adding Media Files.
	Opens the WIRIS Formula Editor page—the visual math equation editor page. To learn more, see Using the Math Editor.
	Add a mashup. To learn more, see Adding Mashups.
	Click to show all nonprinting characters. Click again to hide them from view.
	Format the text as a blockquote.
	Opens the Select Special Character window. Select a symbol to insert at the current mouse pointer position.
	Opens the Insert Emoticon window. Select the emoticon to insert at the current mouse pointer position.
	Position the mouse pointer where you want the anchor to appear and click to open the Insert/Edit Anchor window. Use anchors to position (anchor) other items and objects, such as images. To learn more, see Using Anchors.
	Opens a preview window so you can see how the content will appear after publishing.
	Click to open the Insert/Edit Table window. To learn more about tables, see Working With Tables.
	Click to open the Table Row Properties window.
	Click to open the Table Cell Properties window.
	Insert a blank row in the table above the current mouse pointer position.
	Insert a blank row in the table after the current mouse pointer position.
	Delete the current row from the table. If you select multiple rows, all are deleted.
	Insert a blank column in the table to the left of the current mouse pointer position.
	Insert a blank column in the table to the right of the current mouse pointer position.
	Delete the current column from the table. If you select multiple columns, all are deleted.
	Merge two or more selected table cells into a single cell.
	Split previously merged table cells. If the cell or cells are not ones that were merged, nothing happens.
	Click to open the HTML Code View window. Then, you can directly edit the content HTML code. This feature is intended for experienced web developers. To learn more, see HTML Code View.
	Edit the cascading style sheet (CSS). This feature is included for experienced web developers. To learn more, see Advanced Imag

Information taken from the Bb Help Wiki located at https://help.blackboard.com/en-us/Learn

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