Welcome to this Blackboard Training: Visual Text Box Editor, brought to you by the Center for Innovation. The Visual Text Box Editor or VTBE, is a What You See Is What You Get or WYSIWIG editor used in many areas of Blackboard where text can be typed. These areas include Discussion Boards, Wikis, Blogs and Journals. Written instructions for this training are available at the bottom of your screen. The VTBE is enabled by default in all courses, but can be turned off and on. To toggle the VTBE, simply click the “Visual Editor is:” On/Off button on the top right hand corner of the editor window. The VTBE consists of three rows of icons. The first row is the Formatting Toolbar. It contains icons to control the kind of text you are typing. These are predefined styles for normal text, headings, addresses and special formatted text. You can control the size of the text you type as well as the font your text will be displayed in. Many of the icons may look very similar to what you use in a word processing program, including bold, italics, and underlined text. When working on a document with a group, you may use strikethrough text so your edits can be easily seen. The subscript and superscript icon will raise or lower the text selected within the line of the text you are typing. You can left justify, center, or right justify the text as well. The “direction left to right” and “direction right to left” icons allow you to select text orientation. When “direction right to left” is selected the text you type begins at the right margin of the editor window and flows left. The “direction left to right” displays the typed text in the conventional left to right direction. Also in the Formatting Toolbar you can number items, or display them in a bullet point list. You can also indent your text left or right. The second row of icons is the Utilities Toolbar. To check the spelling of the text you have typed, click the Spell Check icon. When selected, a pop-up box will appear informing you of misspellings and providing suggested corrections. If no words are misspelled, the pop-up box will also inform you of this. The CFI suggest you always use this feature to ensure proper spelling of words before posting information in Blackboard. With the next group of icons, you can cut or remove highlighted text, copy from the text box into another program, or paste text from another program. When copying text from Microsoft Word, it is recommended to paste the text into a plain text editor (like Notepad) before pasting it into the VTBE, in order to avoid unpredictable results. We’ll go over another way to paste from MS Word when discussing the Mashup icon at the end of this training. The clear formatting icon is a good way to quickly clear any previously formatted text. In addition, you can undo your last edit. This has the effect of removing edits one at a time. You can also redo your last change to restore your text to a previously removed formatted version. With the text you select, you can hyperlink, which inserts a clickable web address to a website. You can insert a table, which provides rows and columns for information, or a horizontal line. The horizontal line is a convenient option to break apart information into logical sections when writing. With the next three icons you can change the color of the text you type, add a symbol, and change the background color as well. The Math and Science Notation Tool, also known as WebEQ, and MathML Equation Editor, enables users to use mathematical and scientific notation in the text they are typing. Describing their use is outside the scope of this training. Further information can be found by clicking Help in the control panel and then click guide, and search “WebEQ.” You can see the HTML coding behind the text you type by clicking the HTML source code icon. Using the HTML option is useful if you would like to embed media in the discussion forum that is not from Youtube, Flickr, or Slideshare. Clicking the Preview icon will open a webpage that displays your text as it will appear when submitted. Use Markup Validation to make sure your HTML formatting is correct. The third row is the File Attachment Toolbar. You can attach a file or an image to your post. You can also attach various formats of audio and video media such as an MPEG, AVI video, QuickTime video, audio file or a Flash or Shockwave multimedia file. Finally, by clicking the Add Mashup icon, you can easily embed Flickr photos, a Slideshare presentation or a YouTube video. The last item under the Add Mashup icon is Paste from Word. By selecting this, a window will pop up which will allow you to paste text directly from MS Word. This mashup utility then strips out all hidden MS Word formatting, leaving only the text you wish to paste. Using this method will help to ensure that information is formatted the way you intended.