This summer hundreds of teachers engaged with the work that our Digital Learning Project (DLP) participants built out last Spring. You left us lots of ‘parking lot’ questions and it’s time to follow up with these and give you an update on where we stand.

We have compiled your questions and provided answers. We can’t thank you enough for providing this feedback and we have a great example of how it can make a difference. A parking lot question we received was, “Can a resource be set to open in a new window instead of within Blackboard?” We sent your feedback to Blackboard and they implemented a fix in their July release of xpLor. Now at the top, when a resource opens, is the full link that is clickable to open in a new window! This was a direct result of your feedback to improve the product.

We received several questions around the topic of ‘what’s required?’ for both the digital resources that are posted in Blackboard xpLor and the use of Blackboard in general. As a Division we are committed to using Blackboard for the delivery of digital resources. Our students and parents deserve a consistent go-to location for digital resources regardless of what school they are in and what teacher they are assigned. With that being said, we expect that all teachers whose courses are represented in Blackboard xpLor will make the digital resources provided available.

In addition to the digital resources, there are four resources labeled “DLP” within each course collection. In these documents, you will find some scaffolded ‘learning experiences’ to help you with implementing digital resources within your classroom. Development teams took different approaches to creating these learning experiences, so we have a wide variety that we would like to shore up and produce more in the most helpful style. We expect your feedback on these throughout the year. There is a star system in xpLor that you can leverage, and we ask that if you have strong feelings in either direction, that you contact your Lead Coach or vertical team member to provide more specific feedback.

Finally, we know you have lots of great digital resources to share and we hope you will begin adding them to xpLor and sharing them through the ACPS channel, where other ACPS educators can pull them into their courses. Periodically, vertical teams will review these submissions and make a determination whether it should be included in the course collection.

As a Division, we have made great strides in the past year to make contemporary resources available for our children and we look forward to your continued feedback as we move this important work forward. Please contact Michael Craddock (mcraddock@k12albemarle.org) with any questions about the digital learning project or reference the Digital Learning Project reference site.