Author Archive Ron Hunsberger

A restart of the Blackboard environment is planned for this Friday morning (June 20th) during the morning maintenance window.
This restart is to follow up after the Monday evening incident.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

We wanted to confirm that Blackboard did have periods of unavailability last night (Monday, June 16th) from approximately 9pm until after 10pm.
The problem affected the storage servers that contain documents such as those attached for download or in the digital drop box so some students may report that they could neither download or upload files [...]

Adobe has released public betas for their next version of Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth.  To download, visit Adobe Labs.
Note: Remember to coordinate any software install on a college computer with User Support.

In preparation for the fall implementation of Blackboard version 8, training workshops are being offered by the Center for Teaching and Learning. The workshops will be held during the summer semester and are designed to provide hands-on experience with the new features and tools including Syllabus, Glossary Manager, Self & Peer Assessment, and the [...]

Click here to watch the latest video tour of Release 8.0.

Blackboard has recently released a web site designed to provide learning resources regarding their latest release.
Sahar Javadi, Senior Product Marketing Manager says, “you’ll find interactive product tours designed to provide a quick but engaging, and easy-to-forward, look at various parts of Release 8.0.  For even more detailed informatino, you can view a recorded Webinar and [...]

In order to resolve the technical issues we’ve experienced between our version of Blackboard and Internet Explorer 7 as well as provide more functionality (such as an improved grade book and a plagiarism prevention tool) we are in the planning phase for upgrading our Blackboard system. We would very much appreciate your participation and feedback, [...]

For the most up-to-date information regarding support for a Microsoft product, visit the Microsoft Support Lifecycle web site.

On-Line Web 2.0 Accessibility Course using the W3C ARIA Specifications
Dates: April 15th to May 8th, 2008Days: Tuesdays and ThursdaysTime: 3:00pm - 4:00pm CST (Chicago Local Time)
The on-line course is designed for web developers creating Web 2.0 applications to learn about the accessibility of these technologies to people with disabilities. Participants will learn about [...]

Here’s a link to a 30 minute screencast from Donna Wicks at Kettering University for those interested in learning more about version 8.  Thanks to Jason Rhode (Northern Illinois University) for sharing.
http://tinyurl.com/3dco7w

Below is an excerpt from an email I received from Craig Chanoff, Senior Vice President of Client Success:
February 15, 2008
Since our Client Success update last December, we’ve continued to make steady progress in our attempts to improve your experiences with Blackboard. I write today with our first update in 2008, and want to focus [...]

On January 16, 2008 Sun Microsystems announced it has entered an agreement to acquire MySQL AB, the world’s most popular open source database and part of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack.

“Now that all the major browsers (and many minor ones) have pledged support for Acid2, Ian Hickson has moved on to preparing Acid3 …”  Kimberly Blessing, WaSP Co-Lead
Where Acid2 tested static HTML and CSS, Acid3 will concentrate on the dynamic side of the web - ECMAScript and DOM.  Although a work in progress (only 84 [...]

If you are interested in learning more about WordPress as a blogging  or personal publishing platform, click on the link below to watch a brief (15 minute) video by Michael D. Pollock, CEO of Solostream Web Studio.
http://www.solostream.com/2006/10/30/video-introduction-to-wordpress/

Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of Microsoft’s IE team announced last December 19th that Internet Explorer 8 passed the Acid2 test:
I’m delighted to tell you that on Wednesday, December 12, Internet Explorer correctly rendered the Acid2 page in IE8 standards mode.
The Acid2 test was developed by the Web Standards Project (WaSP) to help browser vendors evaluate [...]