This semester, I've been aiding for Mr. Kowallis, the MIDI Music teacher at my school. He's a great music teacher, but not exactly the best at computers in general, so I've been helping with the more technical things during class (I took it last semester). Various duties such as setting up the shared class folder, troubleshooting synthesizer and software problems, and working on his Blackboard course.
I've never been a fan of Blackboard, mostly hating it on principle because it's closed source, poorly designed, and uses frames. But after poking around behind the scenes at the class control panel, I can see why every class I have that uses Blackboard is so poorly set up. The Blackboard control panel that teachers use is ridiculously counter-intuitive (not to mention insecure, but I won't talk about that). New "content areas" are created by adding a link on the side menu, which itself defaults to include such options as "Course Documents," "Course Information," and other poorly-worded names that seem to show up in every one of my Blackboard-enabled classes.
The "tools" are managed from three separate interfaces, none of which have an obvious purpose and function defined. And why does adding a new Announcement take two additional clicks (into control panel, then under the "Manage Tools" area), while the Discussion Board (where are my move and merge features, by the way?) can create new forums straight from the standard interface accessible from the side menu? Maybe this doesn't seem like a big deal, but for someone who doesn't have hours to spend playing around with the Blackboard control panel (like I do) or attend one of the district training classes, I can see how it'd be pretty hard to grasp.
Bugs I've discovered with the "beta" podcast tool:
- Linking to an external URL for the podcast enclosure breaks the entire Java application and causes an internal web server error
- Editing an episode (i.e. its name and description) after it's already been uploaded causes the direct MP3 link to disappear
- The M3U playlist that is supposed to stream all the podcast episodes is completely broken
Another quick gripe: why do podcast "episodes" need to appear in both a "content area" and the "tool" area for the show? Why can't I upload them directly into the tool interface?
Ugh.
Well, I've managed to overcome these annoyances and publish a podcast through the Blackboard course for MIDI Music. Introducing... the DGS MIDI Music Podcast (hosted by Kevin Walter). Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I'll feature a new project from one of the students in the class. I've got a verified list of all the students who signed the district web release form, so there won't be any questions there.
I can't track episode downloads (even though Blackboard goes out of its way to let teachers track every other bloody content item), which I hope they implement in a future release. I guess I should remember this is a beta application, and not everyone has as perfect betas as Gmail did. However, I am pleasantly surprised at the ability to put time restrictions on content (such as podcast episodes), so I can upload future episodes as I produce them and schedule them to automatically appear in the RSS feed and the episode list at the right time.
Speaking of RSS, YES, Blackboard generates a (semi-valid) RSS feed for the podcast tool. It even creates an iTunes-friendly auto-subscribe link.
So check out my first podcast:
