What is a Blackboard Playground?

A "playground" space in Blackboard is a space which is used by an individual member of staff for experimenting with the tools available in Bb9 [Blackboard 9], and trying out different ways of structuring a course or presenting content. Course content can be deleted in order to start again with a blank space. Users may wish to try things out in the "playground" before adding them to a live course. Only the individual user has access to this area. One "playground" space is available for each member of staff, and can be activated from the University portal.

To be able to use your Blackboard Playground you need to ensure that it is activated. If it is already activated you will see it in your course list when you log on to Blackboard. If it is not yet activated, click on the link below and follow the instructions in order to activate it.

It will take between 3 and 24 hours for your playground to activate. Whilst you are waiting for your playground to activate you can still undertake the activities in the rest of this unit and progress with the rest of the course. You can then come back and experiment in your playground at the end of the course.

If your playground is already activated you may like to experiment with embedding the tools you read about in Blackboard as you go along.

It is likely that you use Blackboard throughout your teaching, but have a quick look at this resource to make sure that there is nothing you are missing!

In summary, your Blackboard Playground is a space to:

1. Experiment with tools you are unfamiliar with;
2. Create content in advance of next academic year, which can then be copied over when your Blackboard pages for next year are activated;
3. Host Collaborate meetings that you want to share beyond one specific cohort e.g. virtual office hours.

In the next part of this course we will move on to explore tools for creating interactive, asynchronous online resources. You can experiment with these in your Blackboard Playground.