Help! Blackboard Is Not Working!

Technology Ate My Homework -
Now What Do I Do?

The sad case of the girl whose homework was eaten by Blackboard...

There was once a 4.0 student who submitted her brilliant paper to her professor, via the discussion board on Blackboard. She worked on it all night and part of the morning. Confident she had polished it to a fine sheen... she hit the submit button. The page disappeared, and the little icon turned... and turned... grinding, grinding. The blank screen finally ground out a horrible message... THE SYSTEM IS DOWN... THE SYSTEM IS DOWN.

Wait! She cried... where is my work? My paper! It just disappeared... I don't (sniff, sniff, wah!) have a copy!

Don't let this happen to you!

*****

Technology hasn't caught up with real world reliability needs. You need to know how to protect your hard work from internet system crashes.

After you've been working as an online college student for a while, you learn to save ALL of your work before you hit the 'submit' button. Once you hit the submit button it's too late! You may end up having to do the WHOLE thing over again... so remember... COPY AND SAVE, baby. Copy and save.

Learn to check with your professor to make sure she has received the paper you emailed. Copy and paste that test before you send it over the ether wires -- to possibly disappear in some timeless, airless, unseen crack of the universe. Or maybe Og just eats it.

Here are my best tips for working on discussion boards, email and Blackboard (the most common software program used by online colleges for delivering college courses).

1. When you send an important email -- always CC yourself -- that way you will know it went through the system. If the return email doesn't show up in your inbox -- you know something went wrong.

2. Always copy and save - to your very own harddrive - anything important you post on Blackboard. Blackboard has been having 'issues' ever since it came online. Posts disappear, tests disappear, papers, even students and professors disappear! It's a scary place. Copy and save. Always, copy and save. Beware...! Beware...! oooo

3. Communicate early. If you think something has gone wrong with an email or Blackboard... let your instructor know right away. Online college is fraught with imperative deadlines. The sooner you communicate a problem, the more likely your instructor will believe the problem was really Blackboard, email or 'the system' and not just your... er... procastination problem.