With the summer break approaching rapidly, let's take a look at a few tips from My Big Campus staff, as well as trainers, teachers and administrators at schools all over My Big Campus.
Take advantage of free training resources
Create your own adventure with self-guided training modules that help you find and share resources with ease, ditch the thumb drive, spend less time at the copier, and more.
Join veteran teachers-turned-MBC Senior Coaches who offer free one-hour My Big Campus Overview webinars and half-hour training webinars on a variety of subjects, on days and times that should work for nearly everyone.
Find inspiration, lesson plans, professional development in the Bundle Exchange
As a staff user, when you click on Bundles you see the Bundle Exchange where you can search for inspiration, lesson plans, PD, and more by keyword, rating, popularity, state or common core standard, and more. Brooke Wheeler from Benjamin Bosse High School came up with a great idea for a Bundle: My teacher is absent! What should I do?. It's a fun and engaging lesson for her art classes that she can share with a substitute teacher for days when she can't be in class. And it's an easy idea to adapt for your own subject areas -- create your own, or find and adapt bundles by state standard, type (lesson plan / unit / project-based learning, etc.), or keyword.
Check out our Professional Learning Communities
The educator-only newsfeed EduTalk has come into its own as a source of ideas, questions and answers, and shoutouts from users in every corner of the US and abroad. Many teachers have already linked My Big Campus with their Twitter accounts, and tweets propagate automatically to EduTalk. You'll see "hoots" from experts like MBC Senior Coach Matt Kitchens, PBL practicioner Jason Seaver, and virtual education specialist Michele Eaton, among many others.
For PD resources, discussions, and subject-area collaboration, visit our Topics -- they work like Groups, but they're open to educators anywhere in My Big Campus. If you're new to MBC, join the MBC Orientation Center. You'll also find special interest areas for Flipped Classroom, iPad/iPod, and Project Based Learning.
Finally, there's the MBC Trainers group. We created this group originally to host the first MBC Summer Academy, back in 2011, and it's become the go-to place for best practices, collaboration, technical discussions and expert help from certified MBC Coaches, MBC staff, and other MBC power users. You don't need to be an MBC expert to participate -- request to join, and group owner Merleen Johnson will even send you some goodies!
Got tips or feedback of your own?
Let me know in the Comments if you have a question, or would like to share a tip of your own. I always welcome your feedback related to the subject of this blog post.
New to My Big Campus? Or just new to some uses of the site? We offer all kinds of free training options that you can take advantage of whenever it's convenient for you.
We also present free, regularly scheduled, interactive Webinars, where you can learn the basics or get up to speed on specific features.
And, to help those of you who can't fit the live webinars into your schedule, we're going to be recording and posting "best-of" videos of selected topics. You'll find them on this page, in the MBC Trainers group.
Finally, for schools and districts with specific training needs, we also offer on-site or on-line training from our Certified MBC Coaches. Contact us forinformation and pricing.
I want your experience with My Big Campus to be a success for you, your students, and your schools. Let me know in the comments if you have questions or ideas related to the subject of this post.
I got to attend a development meeting the other day, and got the go-ahead to tell you about some of the things they're working on for My Big Campus. I'm excited about the news, and I hope you will be too.
Late this spring, or early summer, you'll see a newly redesigned My Big Campus website, incorporating features that many of you have requested. I'll have more information and screenshots when we're closer to releasing the update, but here the highlights.
MBC Drive
- MBC Drive will replace "Your Stuff" and consolidate all your content: Bundles, Schoolwork, Documents, and file uploads.
- You'll be able to create folders in your MBC Drive to organize your items.
MBC Library search
- Teachers will be able to find published Schoolwork and Bundles in the MBC Library, as well as websites, YouTube videos, and other items.
- Search for your own items, items from your school, your district, or shared by the entire MBC community.
- Other advanced search types: standard, keyword, item type, and more.
Accessibility
- The layout and navigation of the My Big Campus website will adapt for easier interaction on all sizes and types of devices: smartphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops, and desktop computers. You'll get an idea of how this will work by logging into the Parent Portal from your phone, tablet, and computer.
- MBC will be easier to navigate for users who require assistive technology or who need to use the website in languages other than English.
Mobile apps
- The Android and iOS versions of the My Big Campus mobile app will be upgraded to support more of the features currently available only in the website version of MBC.
Schools: Plan ahead for summer training
If you're responsible for staff training, plan to update your training materials so teachers are up to speed on the new interface before school starts again after the summer break. We know you'll have plenty of questions, so join us in MBC Trainers, where we'll have sample training resources ready for you to adapt by the time the update goes live.
Got ideas and suggestions related to the subject of this blog post? Let me know in the comments.
I have some exciting news for Bundle creators. In response to many requests to make it easier for students to interact with bundle content, we've added an important new feature, which you'll see within the next day or so in My Big Campus.
We call it Bundle Locks, and it gives you three options:
- Unlock by date and time
- Unlock by user interaction
- Unlock by schoolwork completion
Think of Bundle Locks as a quest -- like a classic adventure story or game, where the hero (or student!) meets a sequence of goals to finish the adventure.
How do I use Bundle Locks?
Add Bundle Locks anywhere in a Bundle: Create or edit a Bundle, click the Content tab, then select Bundle Locks from the "Select type of content" menu. As with all other types of Bundle content, drag your selection from the right pane into the content pane. Bundle Locks hide all content that follows the lock.
Bundle Locks are a good fit for lessons patterned on the four critical PLC questions (PDF):
- What do we expect our students to learn? (Goals/expectations)
- How will we know they are learning? (Assessment)
- How will we respond when they don’t learn? (Intervention)
- How will we respond if they already know it? (Expand learning)
They're also easy to use in the context of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy, and Robert Marzano's Classroom Strategies (PDF).
Tips to remember
Bundle Locks work on the website version of My Big Campus. They aren't yet supported in the mobile apps. Teachers should keep this in mind with students who use My Big Campus from a mobile device -- remind them to use the web browser to view Bundles with Bundle Locks.
The Time and Schoolwork locks require configuration.
- For Time locks, click inside the Time field to select the date and time to unlock content below the lock.
- For Schoolwork locks, select a Schoolwork from the dropdown list. Select "Use Schoolwork Threshold" to require students to meet or exceed the Retake Threshold on the Assignees tab of the schoolwork. If you want students to retake the test until they achieve mastery, set Maximum Submissions to an appropriate value as well.
Teachers and students see different views. If you're a teacher, you'll see the Bundle Lock and all content following the lock. Students will have to unlock content according to the type of lock -- by date and time, by clicking a button, or by successfully completing schoolwork.
Bundle Locks are only active for students. Non-student users will see all Bundle content, so keep this in mind when using Bundles in Professional Development sessions.
I think you'll agree that this is an exciting new way to structure lessons and engage students. As always, I'm interested in your feedback and questions related to the subject of this blog -- just let me know in the Comments.
It's been another busy couple of weeks for the My Big Campus development team. Among the minor fixes they've been working on, they released a few new features that will make My Big Campus even friendlier and easier to use.
Schoolwork
You can "favorite" your frequently-used standards, and apply them to schoolwork questions.
Click the red "heart" next to a standard to add it to Your Favorites, then open the Select Other Standard list to load Your Favorites list.
You can also access Your Favorites from Academic Reports.
Events
There are a couple of updates to Calendar Events.
The first change is one many of you have asked for. You can now specify start and end dates for recurring events. This change applies to existing events too! The default expiration is one year.
The second change applies to group, school, and district events. Our users let us know that they wanted a way to disable email notifications when creating a whole calendar year or season of events, so we've added a checkbox at the bottom of the event form for this.
Bundles
We've also enhanced the Bundles interface.
When you're editing Bundle content, you can now upload new files directly to the Bundle. Click Upload Files to add images, documents, or other files from your computer.
We've also changed the "Share" button so its purpose is more obvious. This button creates an "embed code" that you can paste into the HTML code of a webpage. You can still share Bundles within My Big Campus in the usual ways, on wall and discussion posts, schoolwork, and group resources.
Policies
Finally, we've made it easier to apply custom Policies to My Big Campus users.
You can now apply a custom Policy to an entire MBC group, as well as to individual users. Note that the policy will apply to non-student group members as well as students, so take care when adding or removing permissions. Use the Manage Policy Priority tool to restore appropriate permissions to individual staff users as needed.
As always, I welcome your suggestions and feature requests. Leave a comment to let me know what other features you'd like to see in My Big Campus.
Whenever educators get together, whether it's in person at conferences, in their schools, or on MBC in Topics and EduTalk, there's lots of brainstorming going on. Veteran teachers always seem willing to share best practices with those experiencing online learning for the first time, and new teachers bring fresh insights and questions that keep everyone on their toes.
Usually, the collaboration is spontaneous and informal, but lately I've been seeing a push at the district and state level for teachers to work together to develop and share digital curriculum. This is a good thing on many levels:
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Teachers have the best sense of their own students' needs and interests, and can target these needs without being constrained by availability of textbooks and other offline media
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Schools and districts can stay up to date with new curriculum, without having to wait months or years for textbooks to catch up
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Heavy investment in textbooks can be redirected to forward-looking projects, needed infrastructure upgrades, and up-to-date technology
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The environmental footprint is improved by reducing the amount of paper that is used and discarded with every school term.
The state of Indiana is one example of a high-level mandate for online curriculum. Educators there are free to create their own digital curriculum to replace textbooks. To further that effort, many have begun meeting up inside an MBC topic area, Indiana Statewide Collaboration, to form collaboration groups by grade level and subject area. It's a nice model for educators in other states to follow, and My Big Campus has some excellent tools for this type of collaboration.
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Bundles -- create complete courses with text, online resources, videos, files, images, quizzes and assignments, to share with students, your whole school or district, the entire My Big Campus community, or any Internet user via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
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Bundle Exchange -- Find and adapt Bundles created and shared by other My Big Campus educators. Browse by subject area, standard, or keyword, or "subscribe" to a standard to see newly published Bundles
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State and Common Core Standards -- attach standards to Bundles and Schoolwork questions
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Schoolwork -- import the pre-designed ExamView tests supplied with many curriculum tools (or import your own), then assign to groups or individual students
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Academic Reports -- see which classes and students are meeting standards, and who needs extra help
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NROC and NBC Learn content -- standards-based multimedia courseware, either alone or pre-compiled into Bundles, for you to use in your own Bundles and lessons
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Training -- our hands-on, free, full-day Indiana Training Camp sessions have attracted huge demand (they're actually oversubscribed and there is now a waiting list), but we have many other training options for those inside and outside Indiana.
All of these tools work well for individuals and groups, and can easily scale to larger groups, as our Indiana colleagues have demonstrated so well. But why stop at the school, district, or even state level? My Big Campus has the tools and the audience to erase boundaries and bring people together. Digital curriculum equalizes opportunities for small and large, urban and rural, advantaged and disadvantaged schools. And My Big Campus is the perfect place to make it happen.
Want to learn more? Got some experiences to share? Let me know in the comments.
There are several areas in My Big Campus that use a word processor-like editor to create content:
- Blogs
- Group Pages
- Bundles
- MBC Documents
- Hosted school and district websites
If you've been using this site long, you've probably noticed the editor had some features that were enabled in some areas, but not in others. We've had lots of requests to upgrade the editor: You've asked us for better ways to embed images and videos, and more text formatting options. In particular, many of you have asked for a built-in spell checker to help students and non-students polish their online writing.
I'm happy to announce that today's Golden Nugget is a much improved editor--released last night. Some of the highlights include:
- A spell checker! This was at the top of the wish list, and I'm glad to say the development team has made it happen. Spell check as you type (SCAYT) or check the entire document.
- Consistent interface. The editor works the same way no matter where you are in MBC (tables, anchors, page breaks, symbols, formatting, text direction, word count).
- Find and replace. Match case, match whole words, replace one instance at a time, or replace all.
- New embedding options: YouTube video, uploaded video files from Your Stuff, and images, and you can now upload from within the editor everywhere, not just in Blogs and Group Pages.
- More formatting options: Text Color, Background Color,
Strikethrough, superscript and subscript, support for left-to-right text, symbols, and more.
- Paste preformatted text from the web or Microsoft Word and keep all the formatting, or paste as plain text to apply your own formatting.
I've been testing this new editor behind the scenes for the past few days, and I'm pretty sure you'll like it as much as I do! I'm thrilled with what our developers have accomplished with this update, and there's still more to come. Watch my blog for information on more Golden Nuggets scheduled for release in the next few days, and let me know your ideas and suggestions in the comments!
New to My Big Campus? Or just new to some uses of the site? We offer all kinds of free training options that you can take advantage of whenever it's convenient for you.
We also present free, regularly scheduled, interactive Webinars, where you can learn the basics or get up to speed on specific features.
And, to help those of you who can't fit the live webinars into your schedule, we're going to be recording and posting "best-of" videos of selected topics. You'll find them on this page, in the MBC Trainers group.
Finally, for schools and districts with specific training needs, we also offer on-site or on-line training from our Certified MBC Coaches. Contact us for information and pricing.
I want your experience with My Big Campus to be a success for you, your students, and your schools. Let me know in the comments if you have questions or ideas related to the subject of this post.
I just wanted to mention a couple of updates we made last night. I'll be talking about the Parent Portal release in another blog. Meanwhile, I've got some improvements to talk about for Bundles.
Some of you with sharp eyes have already noticed that the Bundle Exchange now has a filter for Subjects, as well as Type and Sort order. This means that teachers can now browse the Bundle Exchange for for Bundles matching their preferred subject areas.
You'll also notice that you can now specify a Subject while you're creating or editing a Bundle. If you have published any of your Bundles in the Bundle Exchange, take a few minutes now to update the Bundle Subject, to make it simpler for other users to find your Bundles, or check out the updated Bundle Tutorial for other tips.
Our Quality Assurance team is currently testing some other updates, that should be released shortly -- check the MBC Release Notes topic regularly for news. As always, your feature requests help us improve My Big Campus. If you've got ideas or questions related to the subject of this blog post, please let me know in the Comments.
We put a happy little "Golden Nugget" in last night's release, for anyone using iPads, iPhones, and other iOS devices. You can drag and drop iTunes Books and iTunes Apps into your Bundles. We think this will be a great way to add relevant books or apps to your Bundles, and reduce the number of steps your students will need to get all the required content onto their iOS devices.
Where do I add iTunes content?
You'll find two new content types in the "Select type of content" list: iTunes Books, and iTunes Apps. My Big Campus searches the iTunes store for items -- there's no need to add web links or files to Your Stuff to add iTunes content to a Bundle. Search for the book or app to include in your bundle, and drag matching results into the Content pane, just as you would for any other type of Bundle content.
How do people download iTunes content from a Bundle?
The item in the Bundle is actually a link to the item page in the iTunes store. Click the item link in the Bundle to launch iTunes on your iOS device, where you'll be able to download and install the app or book. If you're viewing the Bundle in a web browser, you'll be taken to the iTunes website. Note that iBooks and apps can only be used on a compatible iOS device (iPad, iPhone, or iPod) -- and users are responsible for the cost, if any, to download the content.
We have many more updates on the development schedule for the next few weeks. Keep watching my Blog for updates, and join the MBC Release Notes topic for details. So many of our best ideas come from you, our users. If you have feature requests or comments related to the topic of this Blog post, let me know in the Comments. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you around Campus!