New Technology Notes

NBC LEARN – Blackboard Tool

by Ron Nail

NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, delivers videos of news stories from current day all the way back to the 1920's. Programs such as NBC Nightly News, Meet the Press, the TODAY Show, Dateline NBC and others provide the more than 12,000 stories that are available, including award-winning collections such as Chemistry Now, Changing Planet and others. NBC Learn is staffed by NBC News producers and the stories and videos are aligned to more than 30 Higher Ed collections. Videos are generally less than six minutes in length and NBC Learn is available 24 hours a day every day.

A state-of-the-art media player called Cue Card supports video, photographs, newspaper articles and other media. It provides bibliographical information, clickable keywords, a citation generator, a full transcript on the side, and tabs across the bottom for research annotations. The player also allows media to be saved to a personal playlist.

The videos of NBC Learn are available at http://nbclearn.ttu.edu for all TTU eRaider account holders and can be embedded in a Blackboard course by using the Mashup function in the Build Content area. Visit the NBC Learn Help for more instructions for embedding a NBC Learn video in your course.