Department of Physics
Research, teaching and outreach in Physics at UW–Madison

How to present from an iPad in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra by sharing a file

The steps below are for sharing a file using an iPad in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra.  You can then use the Blackboard drawing tools to draw and point to stuff on slides in the presentation.  If you instead wish to draw using some other app on the iPad (e.g. PowerPoint), see how to share the iPad screen through a computer connected to Blackboard Collaborate Ultra.

The assumption here is that the file to be shared is stored in Box.  The procedure can be adapted to other sources of files.  Also see the next section for alternative ways of uploading files.

  1. If not already signed into Box on the iPad, open the Box app and sign in using your netid@wisc.edu.
  2. Open Safari on the iPad and navigate to the Canvas site for the course.
  3. Join the Blackboard Collaborate Ultra session.
  4. Go to the sharing panel and click Add Files.
  5. Click on Browse in the drop-down menu.
  6. In the window that opens, click on Browse at the bottom if it defaults to Recents.
  7. Click on Locations in the upper left.
  8. If Box is not shown as one of the available locations, click on “Other Locations”, enable Box, and go back.
  9. Under Locations, select Box.
  10. The window should now show your Box files and you should be able to choose the file you want to share.
  11. After the file has finished being uploaded, select the file by clicking on it in the Main Room Files list and then click the Share Now button near the bottom of the panel.
  12. Select a slide under “Select a slide to begin sharing”.
  13. The selected slide will appear in the main area of the Blackboard window.

Alternative: upload the file to Blackboard from a computer

Instead of uploading the presentation file from the iPad, it may be uploaded from a computer.  To do so, connect the computer to the Blackboard session and upload the file by using Add Files.  Disconnect the computer from the Blackboard session (or see note below about having two connections).  Connect the iPad to the Blackboard session, go to Share Files, and select the previously uploaded file.

Note that if you leave the computer connected to the Blackboard session, when you connect to the Blackboard session using the iPad, this second connection will not be allowed. To make a second connection, you can use the guest link for the Blackboard session. By default, the guest connection will not have moderator privileges. In the connection that does have moderator privileges, you can grant moderator privileges to the guest connection by clicking on “Make moderator” in the … menu that appears on the guest’s line in the Attendees panel.