Panopto

Panopto Scheduled Maintenance – January 8

January 6th, 2022
in Announcements

From Panopto:

Scheduled Maintenance Reminder

Panopto Cloud Operations Status

Title: Panopto NA Cloud Scheduled Downtime

Planned Start: January 9, 2022 2:00AM UTC
Expected End: January 9, 2022 6:00AM UTC

Affected Infrastructure
Components: Website, Video playback, Search, Recording / Uploading, Processing / Encoding, Integrations
Locations: North America (NA)

Details:

On Saturday, January 8th, your Panopto Cloud site will be upgraded to the latest release. This upgrade will occur from 09:00 PM to 01:00 AM (next day) EST. We expect up to 4 hours of viewer downtime beginning at the start of the maintenance window.

For more information on what’s new in the latest Panopto cloud release, please refer to the release notes here: https://panop.to/bali-notes

For any questions, please contact Panopto Support online by logging into support.panopto.com or by emailing support@panopto.com.

Best Regards,
Your Team at Panopto

Real-time information about Panopto status, as well as updates about scheduled maintenance and past incidents, is available on the Panopto status page.

RESOLVED – Known Issue: Panopto Video Playback Fails in Safari

October 25th, 2021
in Known Issues

Update, Tuesday, November 1 at 12:45 PM:

Panopto deployed a fix to resolve this issue. Additional information, including a full root cause analysis, is available on the Panopto Status page.

Panopto is investigating a partial viewing outage that impacts the Safari browser, causing video playback to fail. As a temporary workaround, they recommend using Chrome and Firefox.

The Panopto engineering team is preparing a fix for this issue. Updates can be found on the Panopto Status page.

Instructional Technology News – August 18 – Welcome to Fall 2021 and Happy #FirstDayUA

August 18th, 2021
in Instructional Technology News

First Day UA 2021 Dear instructors,

Welcome to the fall 2021 semester at The University of Alabama! Your colleagues here in The Center for Instructional Technology are available to help with your instructional technology and accessibility needs. We provide training, support, workshops, webinars and consultations for UA’s instructional technologies which include Blackboard Learn, Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, Flipgrid, Gradescope, Hypothesis, Panopto, People.ua.edu websites, Respondus, Turnitin, Turning mobile responseware and Zoom.

Learn more about each of these technologies on our website. A few noteworthy items to bring to your attention:

Blackboard Learn

In case you missed it, Blackboard Learn recently moved to the cloud! With the move came a new look, Blackboard Ultra Base Navigation. Ultra provides a new way to navigate course content that will save you time and help you stay on top of what’s important. Visit our website to see highlights of Ultra Base Navigation. We ask your continued patience as we continue to work through Known Issues following the recent upgrade.

Before a course will appear in your Panopto list of courses, you must provision that course for use with Panopto. You can provision your course by clicking on the “Course Videos” button that appears in your Blackboard course menu and following the setup instructions. We’re happy to share that Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) generated captions are now automatically added to Panopto videos. Accurate captions enhance learning and ensure access for all. Be sure to review and edit captions for accuracy.

Hypothesis

Following a successful pilot, Hypothesis is here to stay! Hypothesis is a collaborative annotation tool. It makes reading active, visible, and social, enabling students to engage with their texts, teachers, ideas, and each other in deeper, more meaningful ways. Visit our website for Hypothesis highlights and resources.

Gradescope

Gradescope is another tool recently adopted after a successful pilot. Gradescope can be used for evaluating handwritten responses, programming, diagrams, formulae, and other coursework that can be challenging to assess virtually. Additional information about Gradescope and steps for adding it to your Blackboard course are available on the CIT website.

Reach out for help.

We’re here to help. You can reach us at cit@ua.edu or 205-348-3532. Join us at an upcoming webinar or schedule a consultation with us.

Want more updates from us? Subscribe to our news updates and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

We wish you all the best this semester!

Instructional Technology News – August 13

August 13th, 2021
in Instructional Technology News

Hello instructors,

I am pleased to let you know that UA’s instance of Blackboard Learn has successfully moved to the cloud! Blackboard Learn, and the other affected instructional technologies, are now available. Thank you for your understanding and patience as we performed these necessary upgrades!

Notes and next steps:

I invite you to log into Blackboard Learn and check out the new Ultra Base Navigation. Step-by-step guides and a video introduction of the new Ultra look are available on our website.

If you use digital resources from a third-party in your Blackboard Learn course, please test them and confirm their functionality as soon as possible. If you find that anything is not fully functional, please let us know.

Certain Banner events – users getting added to or dropped from courses, new course and supersection creation, etc. – will continue to process over the weekend. If your course list does not appear as expected on Monday, please contact us after confirming your schedule in myBama. Note that access to some courses, including those supported by The College of Continuing Studies, is not available until the first day of classes.

Panopto users: Before a course will appear in your Panopto list of courses, you must provision that course for use with Panopto. You can provision your course by clicking on the “Course Videos” button that appears in your Blackboard course menu and following the setup instructions.

Join us next week for a live, virtual “Meet Ultra Base Navigation” workshop where we provide an overview of the new Ultra look. Details about these and other workshops are available on our website. We’ll be in touch next week with more beginning of the semester reminders as we approach First Day UA!

Thank you,

Melissa

Instructional Technology News – July 12

July 12th, 2021
in Instructional Technology News

A quick introduction, Blackboard course content cleanup, Panopto recorder update, Blackboard Learn unavailable Aug. 5-13, and hello Flipgrid/goodbye VoiceThread.

New CIT Assistant Director Melissa Green

Thanks to Meagan Bennett for last week’s introduction and for shepherding our Instructional Technology News over the past year. I’m Melissa Green, and I’m thrilled to serve as the new Assistant Director of the Center for Instructional Technology. This role focuses on instructional technology education and outreach for our campus. Along with technology accessibility and thoughtful integration of technology in teaching and learning, building community is a passion of mine, and I look forward to growing this community together. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our news updates and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Blackboard cleanup begins THIS THURSDAY, July 15

Beginning July 15, the Center for Instructional Technology will remove old course content from the Blackboard Learn system. This is in accordance with UA’s LMS Course Retention Policy, which states that materials more than two years old will be removed from the system. Students and instructors should save any materials they wish to keep.  Visit the CIT website for more information on how to back up Blackboard content: How to Back Up Blackboard Content as an Instructor

Panopto recorder update required after July 15

Panopto for Windows and Panopto for Mac users: A July 15 Panopto update will require you to update your software. Step-by-step guidance and instructions for upgrading are available on Panopto’s website:

Blackboard Learn unavailable August 5-13

Blackboard Learn and certain tools accessed through Blackboard Learn (Panopto, Collaborate, and Turnitin) will be unavailable from Aug. 5 until Aug. 13 for a database migration and upgrade. This move will help provide a more stable, scalable, secure, and updated Blackboard Learn experience for UA users.

More information is available on the CIT website, and our CIT team will be sending additional communications to all Blackboard instructors.  We began communicating about this upgrade and downtime in April, but as always, we appreciate your assistance sharing this information! We know there is never a good time to bring down a critical system like Blackboard Learn, but we are looking forward to this migration and the capabilities it will offer.

Flipgrid to replace VoiceThread

UA is transitioning from VoiceThread to Flipgrid as our video discussion and collaboration tool. Flipgrid offers a modern, fun and accessible video discussion option for UA instructors and students, ideal for engaging students asynchronously. Learn more on our website, and start using Flipgrid today: Flipgrid to Replace VoiceThread

VoiceThread will be removed during the August 5-13 Blackboard Learn upgrade. If you previously used VoiceThread for recorded lectures, you can export that content and upload into Panopto, then share it as a link in Flipgrid. Step-by-step instructions on how to export VoiceThread content are available on our website: How to Export VoiceThread Content

We’re here to help! Contact the Center for Instructional Technology for help with instructional technology needs, questions and concerns.

Tag: Panopto