Welcome to Blackboard Training: Announcements, brought to you by the Center for Innovation. In this training you will learn how to create an announcement, set its options, and reorder the announcement list. Written instructions for this training are available at the bottom of your screen. You can use the Announcements tool to inform students of events or other time sensitive information, to welcome them to the course, or to provide any other information which would be of interest to the whole class. To begin, select the Announcements button in your Blackboard course and select Create Announcement. Enter the Subject of the announcement. This will become the title of the announcement which students will see. Type your announcement in the Visual Text Box Editor box (VTBE) provided. If you would like to learn more about the VTBE see the training on the VTBE. You can make the announcement either Permanent or Date Restricted. Permanent announcements always appear first in the announcements list page. If you want to restrict the dates the announcement is visible to students, click Date Restricted. Then set the date restrictions by either typing in a new date and time or by using the Date Selection Calendar and/or the Time Selection Menu. Date Restricted announcements do not appear to students and display an “item is not available” message to course instructors outside of the available date range. If you choose to simply post an announcement it will remain visible for the first seven days it is posted. After seven days, students will need to click More Announcements to view announcements older than seven days. If you wish, you can provide a link within the announcement to another area of your course. This can be useful for example, if you want to point students to the My Grades tools when posting an announcement about assignments being graded. To create a course link, select Browse. Select the area you wish to link to in the announcement. Finally, you have the option to also email the announcement to your students. Using this feature will automatically email your students the announcement and can be used as a way to notify your students of information outside of the course. When you have selected all options you would like select Submit. The new announcement appears on the Announcements page. You may at some point decide you want to rearrange the current order of your announcements. To do this simply select and drag the announcements into the desired order.