Skip to main content

The Blackboard Bungle

Earlier this semester, there was a "glitch" with the Blackboard shell for my writing course. I had spent hours and hours uploading content, organizing the shell, and trying to perfect the course. And then it was gone.

The Blackboard team eventually restored most, but not all, of the content.

It was a tough reminder that online systems are, like all computing systems, imperfect. Systems crash. Databases get corrupted. Things go wrong and you need a contingency plan.

The Blackboard bungle left my students frustrated and has cost me more than few hours. While I had copies of all materials, they were scattered about my hard drive. I didn't want to duplicate files, which I thought would waste space. I sometimes used "links" (aliases) to original files, as a compromise.

On my computer, which is backed up to three external drives and mirrored to another computer, I now have a directory system that aligns with my Blackboard shell. There are folders for each weekly unit, a folder for all assignment prompts, and a folder for additional readings. There are now duplicates, but Word documents are only a few hundred kilobytes. If I use a file for a course (not a specific section of the course), there will be a copy in the course directory tree.

In an emergency, I can now upload the items to recreate a course shell.

I've also exported the shell for the course that choked, which I will do again towards the end of the semester. Yes, the exports are huge compressed files with complete directory contents, but it is easier to re-import a shell than to upload the files.

My students rely on Blackboard in a way I can't imagine doing. They trust it to have their grades, assignment files, and other materials. When things went sideways, I was stunned that some students don't keep copies of their work. The good news (for them) is that I do download all student files to my system — and I make backup copies.

Teaching with technology means remembering that tech fails.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Learning to Program

Late last night I installed the update to Apple's OS X programming tool suite, Xcode 4. This summer, in my "free" time I intend to work my way through my old copy of Teach Yourself C and the several Objective-C books I own. While I do play with various languages and tools, from AppleScript to PHP, I've never managed to master Objective-C — which is something I want to do. As I've written several times, knowing simple coding techniques is a practical skill and one that helps learn problem solving strategies. Even my use of AppleScript and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) on a regular basis helps remind me to tackle problems in distinct steps, with clear objectives from step to step. There are many free programming tools that students should be encouraged to try. On OS X, the first two tools I suggest to non-technical students are Automator and AppleScript. These tools allow you to automate tasks on OS X, similar to the batch files of DOS or the macros of Wor

MarsEdit and Blogging

MarsEdit (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Mailing posts to blogs, a practice I adopted in 2005, allows a blogger like me to store copies of draft posts within email. If Blogger , WordPress, or the blogging platform of the moment crashes or for some other reason eats my posts, at least I have the original drafts of most entries. I find having such a nicely organized archive convenient — much easier than remembering to archive posts from Blogger or WordPress to my computer. With this post, I am testing MarsEdit from Red Sweater Software based on recent reviews, including an overview on 9to5Mac . Composing posts an email offers a fast way to prepare draft blogs, but the email does not always work well if you want to include basic formatting, images, and links to online resources. Submitting to Blogger via Apple Mail often produced complex HTML with unnecessary font and paragraph formatting styles. Problems with rich text led me to convert blog entries to plaintext in Apple Mail