Blackboard Drive

Blackboard Drive

A quick post in praise of the little used blackboard drive connect tool.

As many of you may know, this allows you to instantly map a network drive directly to your MOLE / BB content collection.

This can of course be done with WebDAV but BB drive is much more consistent, less flaky in use and allows you to map and un-map multiple volume connections with one click.

E.g. I have Architecture and Law as separate connections. I can map both or chose to have either disconnected.

For my own use the drive tool helps in several ways.

Firstly, being able to sort and tidy the content collection of an unruly module, especially after several years of roll over with staff uploading material into the root of the content collection.

Now isn’t this tidier?

Overwriting content 

The next is the relatively simple process of overwriting old content without even having to open the  Blackboard VLE on the web.

As long as the file names don’t change it’s a simple drag and drop file copy / replace to update material.

Uploading multiple files & folders 

Lastly, with the increasing difficulty of using the java applet for multiple file uploads (especially in chrome) it’s a must have tool for uploading and deploying our articulate screencast output, which comes in the form of multiple files in nested folders.

I find it easier to control using drive rather than uploading and extracting a zip archive in the content collection.

So how do I get hold of drive connect.

The most recent install files are, located in “instructional content” in your content collection