by Andrea Meier
We’re very excited to share some news with you about BbWorld 2011:
Steven Johnson, best-selling author of “Where Good Ideas Come From,” “Everything Bad is Good for You,” and “Emergence,” will deliver the opening keynote on Tuesday, July 12. A social critic, technologist and
a three-time TED speaker, Johnson is noted for his ability to see emerging trends and explain why they are relevant to both personal life and work. At BbWorld, Johnson will discuss the genesis of ideas, exploring the types of environments and systems – including institutions, communities and disciplines – that propagate creativity and innovation.
by Andrea Meier
Today marks the start of the NCAA Tournament, easily one of the most anticipated sporting events of the year. Following
Selection Sunday, the Blackboard team took a close look at the 68 selected teams and are proud to report that 66 of the 68 schools are Blackboard users.
by Andrea Meier
Originally posted on The Mobile Garage by David Small, Mobile Evangelist
Last week, Kayvon Beykpour, Olivia Spain, and I traveled to the UK to meet with university administrators as they begin to think about their mobile strategies. We had three spanning much of the country – we started in Wales at Cardiff University, then headed northeast to the Aston Business School in Birmingham and finally southeast to foggy London-town for our last session at BPP University College.
by Andrea Meier
During a recent trip to New Orleans, the Blackboard ProEd team arrived a day early to provide a day’s worth of service to the
Samuel J. Green Charter School, a K-8 school with nearly 500 students. As a company, we focus on technology to enhance the teaching and learning experience across education– but on this particular day, we rolled up our sleeves to paint, garden, clean, serve lunch and experience day-to-day life at this extraordinary school.
The Samuel J. Green Charter School is one of four schools that is part of the
FirstLine Network, an open-admission public school that fosters community in New Orleans. On this day, we were lucky enough to assist the students in their
Edible School Yard, an organic teaching garden where students get hands on experience, learning to grow and harvest their own food, then prepare the food which is served in the school’s cafeteria. Needless to say, we were all inspired by this interactive and positive learning environment and we words can’t describe how exciting it was to lend a hand to such a wonderful school.
Watch the video below to see the Professional Education division of Blackboard in action. In addition to our manual labor, the ProEd team members also made personal contributions to be able to donate a much-needed SMART Board to Green Charter.
ProEd in New Orleans from Kevin Alansky on Vimeo.
Giving back
by Andrea Meier
What is the Google zeitgeist?
zeit·geist | Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-”gIst, ‘zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.
“Zeitgeist” means “the spirit of the times”, and Google reveals this spirit through the aggregation of millions of search queries they receive every day. Google has several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. These tools are available for users to play with, explore, and learn from and use them for everything from business research to trivia answers. (
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/index.html)