Hooray!  Blackboard Annotate has finally been updated! You have no idea how long I have been waiting for this.

So, here is what are the changes:

Now in the assignment submission page Blackboard supports the following files:

• Microsoft^®Word (DOC, DOCX)
• Microsoft^®PowerPoint^®(PPT, PPTX)
• Microsoft^®Excel^®(XLS, XLSX)
• OpenOffice^®Documents (ODS, ODT, ODP)
• Digital Images (JPEG, JPG, PNG, TIF, TIFF, TGA, BMP, HEIC)
• Source code (Java, PY, C, CPP, etc)
• Medical Images (DICOM, DICM, DCM)
• PDF
• PSD
• RTF
• TXT
• WPD

Blackboard Annotate also supports the current versions of the following browsers:

• Firefox
• Chrome
• Edge
• Safari

The other interesting change is that the annotation session expires after an hour. Apparently, the user will receive a pop window with a warning message that the session is expiring. The cool thing about this is that whatever work that you had done on the assignment is saved so if you ran out of time and did not manage to finish reading the assignment your work is not lost and when you come back you continue where you left off.

Here is what the Annotations Tool Icon looks like:

Document View Settings

1. Sidebar: View Thumbnail, Outline, Annotation, or Bookmark views of the submission.
2. Pages: Use the arrows to jump to different pages in the submission.
3. Pan: Move the submission on the page.
4. Zoom and Fit: Zoom in and out of the submission or adjust the view to fit the page, fit the width, or select the best fit.

Annotations Tools:

• Drawing, Brush, and Eraser: Draw freehand on the submission with various colors, thickness, and opacity. Select the eraser to remove annotations. You can erase parts of a freehand drawing with the eraser or select the Delete icon to delete the whole drawing.
• Image or Stamp: Choose a preloaded stamp or create your own customized stamp or image to add to the submission.
• Text: Add text directly on the submission. You can move, edit, and change the text and select the font, size, alignment, and color of the text.
• Shapes: Choose Line, Arrow, Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, and Polyline. Each shape has its own settings to change the color, width, opacity, and more.

1. Comment: Provide feedback in comments. Your comments appear in a panel next to the submission.
2. Print or Download: Print or download the submission with the annotations.
3. Search: Search the submission for specific text.
4. Content Library: Create a bank of reusable comments. You can add, edit, delete, and search comments in the library. You can also add a comment directly to the submission page from the menu.

Note: The Content Library is only available in SaaS environments.

Highlighter: Select specific portions of the submission to highlight. As you highlight text on the submission, an additional menu opens. You can highlight, strikethrough, underline, squiggle, or comment on the highlighted section.

Click below to see a video created by Blackboard which guides you through the new updates:

Bb Annotate Overview in Blackboard Learn

I can wait to use these new features in the fall. Unfortunately, I am done with teaching for the year so I cannot try them out, but in the fall I will use Blackboard Annotate to grade student papers so I will let you know what I think of them and if it makes grading easier. If you had the opportunity to use these new features let me know what you think.

All of the information came from:  https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Assignments/Grade_Assignments/Bb_Annotate

Katherine

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