Journal #1 About “Blackboard”

Tina Lin 2nd Oct, 2008
Johanson’s CALL Research Journal #1
About “Blackboard”
Undeniably, the idea of a “paperless semester” is remarkably impressive and environmentally friendly. However, sometimes we still print out the announcements or schedules online to ensure that we don’t miss a tiny message. In the following, therefore, I have some suggestions.
To begin with, I am not sure whether the site’s music is inspirational or not, but I am sure it is really helpful to keep me awake at night. Actually I think Blackboard can be one of an efficient way of communication only if it is clean and well organized. As I see it, it is good to put every material and e-toy we learn from the class on Blackboard. I suggest the sentences and words on the bulletin board can be short and concise which is better for us to understand at a glance. The bulletin board can be improved in a lot of ways; for instance, the announcements should be placed in chronicle order, and the announcements that are from previous semesters could be fixed at the bottom. Otherwise we will miss the message by search the latest one randomly. In addition, probably we can add a forum or discussion board which is capable for us to leave messages, questions or any suggestions about the course or anything related to our studying. I guess that would be even more helpful and useful of Blackboard.
Despite some of the flaws, Blackboard does have its advantages such as the convenient communication. It is actually a very good way to achieve the paperless semester dream. Besides, I am very appreciated to have every single thing we should achieve during a week online. Also, some awesome presentations of brilliant students from previous classes indeed provided me a lot of ideas about this course.
As a matter of fact, I do feel a bit overwhelmed by everything these first weeks.
Nevertheless, I am really entertained by Robert’s humorous way of teaching. I hope I will learn a lot of fascinating stuffs and tools in this course. And of course, learn the tips of graduating from this program as fast as I can. Last, after some discussions with my classmates, I would really like to know what exactly “trend piece” is. Could you please kindly let us know? Thanks a million times.