Since Summer 2006 the University has licenced third party plug-ins for Blackboard that provide blog, wiki, and podcast functionality. These have worked well and take up has been reasonable. It was necessary to licence third party plug-ins for this functionality because it was not provided as part of the core Blackboard product.
With the recent upgrade to Blackboard the vendor has introduced their own blog and wiki features which are more embedded into the core application. There are differences between the two but the core functionality remains reasonably consistent.
The University has determined that it is no longer necessary to licence the third party blog, wiki and podcast tools and the decision has been made to not renew the licence for these tools in May 2013. This will provide a substantial cost saving to the University which can be re-invested in further developments to the Managed Learning Environment.
The new blog and wiki tools are currently being documented and from 31 August 2012 the new blog and wiki tools will be enabled.
At the same time the existing “Campus Pack” blog, wiki, and podcast tools will be set to be unavailable to new users.
If you are planning to use blogs, wikis and podcasts, in the new academic year (2012/13) please use the new Blackboard blogs and wikis, instructions for which will be made available on the iSolutions web site from 31 August.
Podcasts can be uploaded as audio files, or if RSS is required the Panopto Lecture Capture system can provide this functionality.
Is RSS enabled?
1. If RSS has been enabled for the blog you are viewing, an RSS logo will appear in the bottom right corner.
2. Right click on the RSS link.
Copy the link shortcut
3. From the context menu that appears, click on Copy Shortcut. This will copy the RSSlink into the clipboard.
Paste the link into your aggregator
4. Open your RSS aggregator and use the option to add a new RSS feed.
5. Paste into the address text box the address of the RSS feed. To paste the text either press CTRL+V or right click within the text box and choose paste.
6. Complete the set up of the subscription according to the online help of your RSS aggregator.