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Family,
Thank you very much for your patience as we continue to navigate these uncharted waters. We believe that the slight pause in the use of Blackboard Collaborate Ultra has allowed us to get a much better handle on the supervision of the online classrooms. I want to apologize in advance for the long message, but I want to make sure you have as much information as possible. Here is a brief description of what changes have taken place:
The original Blackboard Collaborate Ultra (BBCU) sessions utilized a general guest link as the entry point for students to come into the classes. Because this was a general link, anyone could use it, or share it to gain entry into the virtual classrooms. Students were able to enter the class under any name and thus there was anonymity in place for them to be able to disrupt classes without consequence if they chose to. Teachers initially had not limited voice, chat , and video features because they wanted to see their students' faces and reconnect with them. Again, this allowed the possibility for negative behaviors to exist in the classes.
The county has been able to find a way to tie the access to future BBCU sessions to students’ already established Blackboard 24-7 accounts which will allow teachers to see exactly who is in the classrooms identified by their actual names. Only one student may use a logon which controls the sharing issue. Because of the negative experiences from yesterday, we have learned that the features that allowed students to openly express themselves needed to be secured, so teachers will be able to restrict those as well. If a teacher does experience some form of disruptive behavior, they will be able to identify that particular student and report them to the appropriate administrator as well as contact home.
With these changes to our BBCU sessions, we do believe that we will be able to offer a much safer environment for all students. These changes have created a different issue however that we will have to deal with as it comes. Over the past couple of days, the high volume of usage Backboard 24-7 has experienced has overwhelmed the system and caused it to crash on multiple occasions. The BBCU sessions are somehow not on the same network as 24-7 and so we never experienced a time when BBCU crashed. Because students will be accessing their BBCU sessions through Blackboard 24-7 now, there could be issues with being able to log in. The county is working with Blackboard to eliminate these crashes, but there has been no solution found as of yet.
The access point for students to get into classes will change, so I am providing this link to allow you and your student to be able to see a video of how they will get to their BBCU classes. Here is also a step by step in PDF format. Teachers will also be providing them this information, but please keep this in the event they don’t obtain it.
Unfortunately the county had to make the decision to cancel online classes for the middle school because of such issues today. I want you to understand that this could be the case for our high school courses as well in the future if a solution from Blackboard is not achieved around the volume of usage. In this event, teachers will be asking students to go to their Google Classroom sites to gain access to content. Teachers at that time will not be able to interact with their students in a face to face type (synchronous) environment.
Cross your fingers with me folks as we are not out of the woods yet, but we are in a better place than yesterday I believe. Please continue to encourage your child to actively participate and to be respectful of the space they are in. Have a great evening and I hope to see many of your students in their virtual classrooms tomorrow as I make my rounds and drop in on them. Be safe. #OneStallion
Gary
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