Geography 141: The Natural Environment; Fall, 2011

Information regarding Blackboard, i>Clickers, and Google Earth

You should become familiar with computing and printing resources on campus.  There are computer labs for general student use in several buildings (see the locations of computing labs on campus).

Blackboard is the course management internet-based system for the University of Oregon.  You register for classes and discussion sections on Duckweb.  Once registered, you have access to course materials on Blackboard.  You can get help for using Blackboard at the Library Learning Commons in the Knight Library.

You will have two Blackboard course listings for Geog141.
  1. The main course page on Blackboard will be used for 1) Course-wide announcements, 2) Grade posting of exams and iClicker questions, and 3) Distribution of additional materials.  The additional materials will be posted under "Course Documents" on your blackboard page. These will include lecture slides, extra notes, web links, and movies or animations to help you learn the material.
  2. The discussion section page on Blackboard will be used for 1) submitting answers to your weekly lab assignments, and 2) viewing grades of your weekly lab assignments.  Please see this document for tips on submitting answers via Blackboard. http://libweb.uoregon.edu/index/cms-filesystem-action/scis/blackboard/bbtesttakingguide.pdf
i>Clickers are the tools we use in lecture to answer multiple choice questions and get instant feedback.  These are required and available at the UO Bookstore.  Once you have your i>Clicker, you need to register it on Blackboard.  See the link under "Course Documents."  Remember to use your Duck ID, not your student ID.  Your Duck ID is your uoregon email address before the @ symbol.  Your student ID is a number that generally begins with 95....   You do NOT need to register your iClicker on the iClicker web page.  Once you register your iClicker once on Blackboard, you are set to use it for your other classes this term.

iClickers are easy to use.  All you need to do is the following:
  1. Hold the power button down for two seconds until the blue power light blinks.  Enter the code used for this class, which is "AB".  That is, press A, then press B.  This sets the frequency of the clicker to that used by the base station at the front of the room.
  2. If you use your iClicker in more than one class, you need to repeat the frequency set-up each time you switch classes.  You can switch the frequency code on your clicker at any time.
  3. When you vote in class, your clicker will give a green blink to show that the base station has received your vote.  Pressing more than once will not do anything.  You can change your vote until the instructor states the polling period is over.  Then you will see a bar chart of how the entire class responded to the question.
Google Earth is popular free "virtual globe" that is available for Macs and PCs (OS X and Windows), and there is even an iPhone/iPod Touch version of the software for simple browsing.  It is available on most computers in the computer labs.  Be sure you have the most recent version (version 6).  We will use Google Earth in some discussion sections...mainly the first few weeks and extensively for discussion sections 8 and 9.  I suggest downloading it and becoming familiar with basic navigation and measuring.  Here are some ways to learn your way around Google Earth's features:
  1. Watch the tutorial videos for Navigation, Searching for Places, and Drawing and Measuring
  2. Take a feature tour of Google Earth
  3. Explore places on your own and experiment with turning layers on and off (menu on the left side of Google Earth), viewing photos at specific places, using the "Look" control tool to see 3D views, and turning latitude and longitude lines on and off (typing Control-L).
Viewing kml and kmz files in Google Earth may be as simple as double-clicking on the file.  On some computers, this won't work.  In those cases, you will need to 1) save the kml file to your computer.  Then, 2) open Google Earth.  Then, 3) in Google Earth, choose File....Open....and find the kml or kmz file.  Open it.  It should be in the left menu bar under Temporary Places.  

Department of Geography, University of Oregon
Modified Oct 13, 2010

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