One of the goals I had in mind for My Big Campus was to provide a safe place where students could learn how to become good digital citizens. Unlike other social network sites, My Big Campus is private, which means that only people with a My Big Campus login can see what's on this site. Your school can also control whether other MBC users can see the content students share here. And, if someone searches for you in Google, Bing, or other Internet search engines, your My Big Campus activities will never appear in the results. Finally, My Big Campus staff check frequently for inappropriate content so they can reach out and provide support and guidance as needed.
Why is this important? Learning to use the Internet is a lot like learning to drive a car. Someone you trust gives you the instruction and coaching you need, and lets you practice -- under supervision, until you're ready to handle things on your own. I think just about everyone will agree that carelessness or irresponsibility behind the wheel can have serious consequences. The Internet can be like that too -- without someone to show you the right and wrong way to handle online activities, you could find yourself in trouble, whether it's unwanted contact from strangers, embarrassing or hurtful information about yourself or your friends becoming public, or even identity theft (when someone uses your name to get credit cards and loans).
As scary as that sounds, with the right skills and a little common sense, you can enjoy all the Internet offers, while avoiding the dangers. While the Terms of Use for My Big Campus is mostly about what you're not allowed to do, we've also created a Digital Citizenship Pledge, which boils everything down into twelve simple guidelines. You'll find a link to the Pledge at the bottom of every page in My Big Campus. Take some time to read and think about the twelve guidelines.
Here's the Pledge, which is just part of the My Big Campus Terms of Use you have already accepted:
My Big Campus Digital Citizenship Pledge
- I will not share personal information online about myself or others such as home address, telephone number or age.
- I will not use bad language including acronyms or abbreviations.
- I will not have conversations or create posts that would be inappropriate in the classroom.
- I will not threaten, insult, gossip, tease or be mean to others.
- I will respect the feelings and ideas of others.
- I will not add pictures or videos that would not be appropriate to share in the classroom.
- I will flag any inappropriate content I find.
- I will not share my login information with anyone or allow anyone else to use my account because I will be held responsible for anything that they do.
- I will not spam others.
- I will try to use correct grammar and spelling.
- I understand that using ALL CAPITALS is considered yelling and may offend others.
- I will check with my teacher whenever I have questions about any of the rules.
You can see that these are really just the same rules you use to get along with people in real life. Talk about them with your friends and teachers and think about how to apply each guideline to your online activity. If you have questions, or you're not sure what to do, ask your teachers -- they want you to succeed!
I wanted to talk today about Bundles, and share a few tips for students and teachers.
If you're new to Bundles and would like a quick overview, these two blog posts will give you the basics:
Sharing your Bundles
There are lots of ways to share a bundle, and you don't need to be logged into My Big Campus to view a shared bundle.
- Attach your bundles to wall or discussion posts. Click Bundle below the text box to get a list of your Bundles, Click to select, then click Post.
- Both teachers and students can attach Bundles to assignments. Attach your bundles below the text box, then save.
- If you're a group member, you can also add your bundles to group resources. Go to the group resources tab, then click Bundle. Select from Your Bundles, then click Share Attached Items.
- You can "embed" a link to a Bundle on an external website (your blog, your personal website, or a school or district website). Open a Bundle, then click the Share button to get the embed code. Copy and paste the embed code into your web page editor, then save and publish the page.
- Copy and paste a link to the bundle from your browser's address bar into a message, discussion, or email.
Branching a Bundle
If you see a bundle you like, no matter where you found it, click Branch to save a copy of it in Your Bundles. Branched bundles are then yours to edit and share as you wish.
Branched bundles have a link to the original, with the bundle creator's name.
Publishing a Bundle
This one's for teachers only. You can add your bundles to the Bundle Exchange, for other teachers to view, share, branch, and modify. Note that you don't have to publish your bundles to the Bundle Exchange before you can share them – publishing just makes your Bundle available for other teachers to see and use from a central location.
If you change your mind about making your Bundle public, just edit the bundle and click Unpublish to remove it from the Bundle Exchange.
Searching the Bundle Exchange
This is also a teacher-only feature. The Bundle Exchange is like a free public library of Bundles that other teachers have created and shared with the entire professional MBC community, and it's the first place you see when you click Bundles in the left navigation menu.
Note the filter options at the top of the Bundle Exchange page:
- Explore. Look for Bundles linked to state and common core standards in your subject areas, or see all Bundles.
- Filter by Type. Show Bundles tagged by type: Lesson Plans, Professional Development, Modules, and more.
- Sort by: See popular, highest rated, or newest Bundles.
- Search: Find bundles by subject area, keyword, or tag.
Your Bundles
This is a list of all Bundles you own, including
- Bundles created by you
- Bundles branched by you
- Bundles where you are a Collaborator
If you're a teacher, you can see which Bundles you've published to the Bundle Exchange.
You can also delete Bundles from the list. Take care with this, because deleted Bundles are gone and can't be restored.
Collaborating on Bundles
This one's for everybody. Are you working on a team project? Add collaborators to your Bundle.
You can work on a Bundle together with members of your groups, or with everyone in a group. To add collaborators, edit your Bundle, then click Collaborators. Type a few letters of a username or group name, then click Search. Click + to add. Collaborators will then see the Bundle in their Your Bundles list, and they'll be able to open and edit the Bundle.
Tagging and Standards
If you're publishing or sharing lesson content, you can link your Bundle with any State or Common Core standards that apply. This makes it easier for teachers to find and use Bundles for their subject areas and grade levels in the Bundle Exchange. Edit your bundle, then click Standards in the left navigation menu. Choose your state, then drill down in the list of standards for the specific ones you want to apply to your Bundle.
Standards are available for the most important core subject areas, but we're open to requests for additional subject area standards – just let me know what you need.
To refine your Bundles even further, add keyword tags. This makes it easy for other educators to find relevant bundles. You can also use tags to add standards that aren't yet in our database.
Bundles and Copyright
One last thing: Sharing and collaborating are what My Big Campus is all about. For original content you created yourself, sharing is fine, and encouraged. In the United States, copyright ("right to copy") exists by default when a work is created, and need not be registered. However, you can place your own, original work in the Public Domain, or apply a Creative Commons or other public license that allows reuse with certain conditions.
Don't assume that anything you find on the Internet is okay to share without permission: read the fine print. If you're including content you didn't create, respect the copyright owner's wishes by adhering to any conditions they've specified when they shared their work. This can be anything from a simple attribution with a link to the source, to purchasing a license to reuse the work.
Copyright law provides for "Fair Use" in certain contexts, so be fair: the onus is on you to make sure you have the right to reuse anything you add to a Bundle.
If you have ideas or questions to share about using Bundles in My Big Campus, let me know in the Comments.
Sharing means many things on My Big Campus.
- There's social sharing: your wall, your blog, groups, and your conversations with students and teachers. Show people what you're working on, ask a question, or answer a question.
- There's also professional sharing: through Bundles, EduTalk, and staff-only Topics. No matter what your location, subject area or grade level interest, you can connect with and learn from your fellow professionals.
- Then there's content sharing: the My Big Campus Library, MBC Documents, Bundles, Pictures, Videos, and Your Stuff. My Big Campus can be your single source for everything you need in school, including lessons, educational videos, your personal files, and favorite pictures.
Most importantly, My Big Campus is a place for people to get together and share. Every day, I hear from people who offered help, asked for help, taught someone, and learned from someone. And people aren't just sharing with their close friends, classmates, and others within their school. A lot of the sharing happens between people who haven't even met each other yet. Someone's life just got a little easier, because someone else decided to share.
What will you share with My Big Campus today? Let me know in the comments.
Part of my vision for My Big Campus was to make it possible for professional educators to connect with their peers beyond school and district boundaries. This is especially important for teachers whose schools have limited access to technology and resources. I searched My Big Campus while researching this blog, and was pleased to see the creative ways educators are using MBC to reach out to their fellow professionals:
- Groups: There are groups within just about every school and district for professional development of some type: book studies, conference tie-ins, inservice events, local and district issues, technical resources, and much more. You'll find groups at your school and district here, with search tools to find publicly accessible groups anywhere on My Big Campus.
- Topics: For just about every professional issue, there's a Topic on My Big Campus, where you can share ideas in a discussion or chat, upload or download resources, set up events, and browse the member list for like-minded educators. Check out the list of available topics here, or create your own (and remember to promote it on EduTalk!).
- Library: The Reference Tools category is the go-to place in the MBC Library for professional development videos, web sites, and documents, all contributed by My Big Campus educators for you to enjoy.
- Bundles: You'll find a growing collection of Professional Development Bundles in the Bundle Exchange. Training tools, lesson planning tips, and so much more. Borrow and adapt what's there, or publish your own Bundles for others to use.
- EduTalk: We fine-tuned this Educator-only feed to improve the relevance and focus of posts, and made it possible to share Bundles directly with your EduTalk feed.
There's more to come, however. Tonight's update to My Big Campus adds collaborative editing for Bundles. You'll be able to share editing tasks with individual users, or with an entire group. Students can collaborate on Bundles too -- you'll be able to choose collaborators in any of your groups, as well as people who are following you. Here's a peek at what you'll see when you're editing a Bundle:
Click Collaborators, then search for users and groups. Click [+] to add them as editors for your Bundle. They'll be able to see and edit the Bundle from the Your Bundles page.
The other addition to Bundles is Bundle Type. Staff users will be able to assign a bundle to a category such as Lesson plans, Lessons, Units-Modules, Digital Books, Project Based Learning, and Professional Development. This will make it easier for other educators to browse the Bundle Exchange to find exactly what they're looking for.
We have more updates on the schedule or in testing. Check the What's Next for My Big Campus? page in the MBC Orientation Center to see what we're working on over the next few weeks.
Have a great weekend, everyone, and let me know in the comments if you have questions or suggestions for new My Big Campus features.
About six months ago, the My Big Campus development team released EduTalk, a separate feed within My Big Campus for educators, consisting of status updates from non-student users. We made it possible to link EduTalk, and your wall posts, with your Twitter feed. And we watched educators reaching out to each other beyond school and district boundaries with questions about best practices, success stories, tips, and general camaraderie. I'm very pleased to see how EduTalk has taken shape and matured over time.
EduTalk is now ready to "graduate." This weekend's MBC release makes some minor changes to the EduTalk interface that we think will make EduTalk even more useful:
- The default action for wall posts turns off "Include in EduTalk." We believe this will improve the quality and relevance of the EduTalk feed. If you've enabled Twitter integration, your "tweets" will still post to EduTalk as well as your wall.
- The default EduTalk view will change from "Your Feed" to "Everyone." Because the EduTalk posts will now be more focused, we think this will give you a better opportunity to find people to follow.
- In addition to sharing bundles on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +, you'll now have a button to share your favorite Bundles on EduTalk.
We've got more changes coming later this month, and it looks like a busy summer for our developers as well. Visit the What's Next for My Big Campus page in the MBC Orientation Center topic to see what we're working on. As always, if you've got feedback, comments, or feature requests, please let me know in the Comments.
You may have seen my blog earlier this week about Bundles. That blog was mainly for teachers, to explain how they can use Bundles in their lessons. Today I'm going to talk about what Bundles mean for students.
Bundles are a new way to collect videos, group content, documents and text into self-contained online presentations. Your teacher can share Bundles with you to use in the classroom, or as homework you can do wherever you can connect to My Big Campus. Your My Big Campus activity page will soon have a link to Bundles.
Students can create Bundles too. You can use Bundles to collect resources for
- Projects
- Reports
- Assignments
- Presentations
- Digital Portfolio
You can share a Bundle you create on your wall, or include it as an assignment submission. You'll get a chance to create and share your own bundles when the new feature goes live in a few more days.
As always, I'm interested in what you think about this new feature. Please let me know in the Comments if you have ideas or questions.
We've got an exciting new feature to talk about this week that my developers and I think will make it easier for teachers to create and share self-contained, standards-based lessons. We're calling this new feature "Bundles," and it's currently being tested by a hand-picked group of MBC educators. Here's some of what you'll see once testing is complete:
- A new way to collect videos, group content, documents and text into self-contained online lessons
- Alignment with State and Common Core Standards
- Reusable content objects from the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC)
- Sharing: with your own students, your school, district, or the entire My Big Campus educator community
- A Bundle Exchange, where educators can search for Bundles to use and adapt in their own curriculum
- User ratings and comments, and links to "like" your favorite bundles on MBC, Twitter, Facebook, and G+
- Branches: Take an existing Bundle and make it your own: adapt and remix, and share it again
What to expect
We're making some changes to the MBC user interface to replace Collections. Here’s what to expect:
- A new name: Bundles
- A new link: Direct access to Bundles (formerly Collections) in the left navigation bar
- New functionality: Bundles can include Group pages, State and Common Core standards, NROC content objects, and freeform text
- Sharing options: Publish your Bundles to the Bundle Market to share with other educators; adapt and remix Bundles shared by others
- Redesigned Your Stuff page: Collections will no longer appear on the Your Stuff page. You’ll now find them in Your Bundles
Get up to speed
We're hosting live Webinars this week for all interested educators, to walk them through the new features and explain some of the changes we're making to the My Big Campus interface. To register for a webinar, click the link for the day and time that works best for you.
For those who can't make it to either presentation, we'll be recording and posting a "highlights" video in the MBC Orientation Center topic.
Interested in a sneak preview?
We've opened up testing to all current MBC Coaches, and they're already busy developing their own Bundles for the Exchange. In time for launch, we need more testers, and more content. If you're an educator, and you're interested in helping us with this project, send a Conversation to our lead developers Ryan Bond or Carson McMillan..
My Big Campus offers many different Resource Sharing options.
You can control where you want to share each item:
- Your Photos page
- The Resource Library
- Your Stuff (Personal Files)
To change where your file is shared, click the “gear” icon:
To see where your file’s being used, click the Globe icon:
You can also share items from Your Stuff, Quick Links, MBC Documents and Library Items on your Group Resources page, or, you can upload resources directly from your computer. It’s as easy as “Click,” “Pick,” and “Share.”
We're always looking for ways to improve My Big Campus. Got a question? A suggestion? An Idea? Let me know in the Comments, and I’ll share your feedback with the development team.
One of the goals I had in mind for My Big Campus was to provide a safe place where students could learn how to become good digital citizens. Unlike other social network sites, My Big Campus is private, which means that only people with a My Big Campus login can see what's on this site. Your school can also control whether other MBC users can see the content students share here. And, if someone searches for you in Google, Bing, or other Internet search engines, your My Big Campus activities will never appear in the results. Finally, My Big Campus staff check frequently for inappropriate content so they can reach out and provide support and guidance as needed.
Why is this important? Learning to use the Internet is a lot like learning to drive a car. Someone you trust gives you the instruction and coaching you need, and lets you practice -- under supervision, until you're ready to handle things on your own. I think just about everyone will agree that carelessness or irresponsibility behind the wheel can have serious consequences. The Internet can be like that too -- without someone to show you the right and wrong way to handle online activities, you could find yourself in trouble, whether it's unwanted contact from strangers, embarrassing or hurtful information about yourself or your friends becoming public, or even identity theft (when someone uses your name to get credit cards and loans).
As scary as that sounds, with the right skills and a little common sense, you can enjoy all the Internet offers, while avoiding the dangers. While the Terms of Use for My Big Campus is mostly about what you're not allowed to do, we've also created a new Digital Citizenship Pledge, which boils everything down into twelve simple guidelines. You'll find a link to the Pledge at the bottom of every page in My Big Campus. Take some time to read and think about the twelve guidelines.
Here's the Pledge, which is just part of the My Big Campus Terms of Use you have already accepted:
My Big Campus Digital Citizenship Pledge
- I will not share personal information online about myself or others such as home address, telephone number or age.
- I will not use bad language including acronyms or abbreviations.
- I will not have conversations or create posts that would be inappropriate in the classroom.
- I will not threaten, insult, gossip, tease or be mean to others.
- I will respect the feelings and ideas of others.
- I will not add pictures or videos that would not be appropriate to share in the classroom.
- I will flag any inappropriate content I find.
- I will not share my login information with anyone or allow anyone else to use my account because I will be held responsible for anything that they do.
- I will not spam others.
- I will try to use correct grammar and spelling.
- I understand that using ALL CAPITALS is considered yelling and may offend others.
- I will check with my teacher whenever I have questions about any of the rules.
You can see that these are really just the same rules you use to get along with people in real life. Talk about them with your friends and teachers and think about how to apply each guideline to your online activity. If you have questions, or you're not sure what to do, ask your teachers -- they want you to succeed!
This past weekend saw the rollout of our newest My Big Campus feature: EduTalk. EduTalk is a separate feed within My Big Campus for educators, consisting of status updates from non-student users. We created EduTalk to make it easier for educators to create Personal Learning Communities for collaboration and learning, outside their local school and district boundaries.
Already, I’m seeing educators sharing tips and links on EduTalk, getting practical answers from their peers, and arranging meet-ups at HECC, CETPA, and other important events going on this week. They’re using laptops, tablets and smartphones to post on EduTalk, and they’re hooking up EduTalk with their Twitter accounts to post updates.
It’s always a gamble to launch a new feature like this. Will people notice? Will they use it? Will it truly take off, and become an important part of their professional lives? Will it allow educators to “work smarter,” and apply state of the art pedagogy in their own classrooms and office?
I think the answer’s obvious. In just the first full school day, EduTalk has racked up hundreds of quality posts. Educators are reaching out to their colleagues and attracting both comments and new followers. EduTalk is a soapbox, and a peek into the everyday lives of teachers everywhere.
Come check it out. Click EduTalk on the left navigation bar. Watch and learn from your peers. Follow the ones who interest you to see them in Your Feed. And, when you’re ready to reach out, start posting!