Blackboard Blogs

BbWorld & DevCon: A Year-Round Investment

It seems like every day brings a new report of the stock market retreating, a newspaper folding or some other macro- or micro- economic meltdown. Closer to home, many professionals have already seen definite cutbacks in their working lives – especially where travel, training and conferences are concerned. With budgets tight, it seems like fewer participants can afford to attend very relevant and worthwhile events.

Which is why we’re so excited about the early news on registration for BbWorld ’09: as of this week, more than 500 members of the community have registered for the event. This number significantly outpaces registration rates over the past two years and includes representatives from 10 different countries and 44 states. Already, there are more than 70 registrants from the K-12 community and more than 70 for DevCon. Sixty-five percent have attended BbWorld in the past.

Blackboard Launches Instant Messaging in Blackboard Learn

Today, Blackboard announced an exciting new development: education-focused instant messaging within the Blackboard Learn platform and now available to the entire Blackboard client community. Through a new partnership with Wimba Inc., educators and learners at any of the education, government and professional organizations working with Blackboard worldwide can use instant messaging to enhance their teaching and learning experience safely and securely within Blackboard Learn.

Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen discusses the exciting development in this video:

To find out more about this new instant messaging capability within Blackboard Learn, see the Blackboard Learn Web site:

http://www.blackboard.com/Teaching-Learning/Learn-Capabilities/Course-Delivery/Blackboard-and-Wimba.aspx.  

What’s Next for Higher Ed: The Lion at the Gate

Posted by Gordon Freedman, Blackboard's Vice President Education Strategy

Although they may not mean to, universities orient societies in certain directions, just as much as schools prepare young citizens. Our education systems, in the words of the late New York University thinker, Neil Postman, don’t prepare students for life per se. They actually create “new publics.” They are the holders of the society in waiting, helping to create the young adults who will take over in time.

This view raises some interesting and disturbing questions. If I were among that public-to-be, as are my children, I would have some hard questions for my elders and their great institutions. Everywhere you look there are messes: finance, manufacturing, the world economy, the environment, addiction to fossil fuel, violence and bloodshed. And the list goes on. Where, I might ask, does the university play in this world?