Among the many new additions to Blackboard 9.1, one cannot be overlooked. The text editor, while looking the same comes with a new feature and that is adding mash-up. Let’s take a look at the text editor and what each of the buttons does.

You will see this text editor in several locations with Create Item being one of them and any place asking for a description of instructions.  This menu’s options may not be too far off from what you see in any other notepad like software such as MS Word. The options are in a different location when the eye-pleasing design of Word.

Let’s look at the first row:

This is all standard text editing options and nothing different from Word or Google Docs.

Let’s look at the second row:

Here are some changes! The last 5 options are something that we do not find on a standard word processor.  They are not new to Blackboard however. What do these features do?

• WebEQ is an equation Editor uses a graphical interface where scientific and mathematical symbols are selected via graphical buttons.
• MathML is another equation Editor requires you use a math markup language (think HTML and Java).
• HTML Mode allows you to add in HTML code into the text. This was the only means of embedding YouTube videos into Blackboard until the addition of Mashups.
• Preview allows you to … preview the materials in the text editor as it would appear live. This option was useful when adding HTML code to the page or to check formatting.
• Markup Validation checks for and removes any HTML code in the text editor that is incompatible with Blackboard.

Let’s look at the third row:

In the third row, we also have a lot of old features and a one new, Add Mashups. This row, as well as row 2, contains features that are available to you outside the text editor. Under Build Content, you can add images, urls, audio/video content, and Mashups. This gives you another option to do so as well as give you the Paste from Word feature that is only available through the text editor.

What does the Paste from Word option do?

When selected, the Mashup opens a new window that you can copy and paste your text from a word document into without the worry of losing any of your original formatting. This is big news for those of us that create things in Word before transferring them over to Blackboard.

To download this tutorial, click here: Breaking down text editor!