Blackboard Blogs

Facebook + Blackboard = Blackboard Sync

At BbWorld '07 in Boston, Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen announced we were going to help our clients connect with their students on their level and in a way that gets them the information they want, when and how they want it.

Today we took a big step toward that goal with the launch of Blackboard Sync, which combines Facebook with our Blackboard software.

Now, when a student is logged onto Facebook, they can use Blackboard Sync to receive a notification that there's an update or other information has been posted on Blackboard about their courses.  Receiving course information and updates through Facebook will help students be more in touch with their academic studies on a day-to-day basis.  The idea behind Blackboard Sync is to make academic information available to students wherever they are—and we know a lot of them are on Facebook.

It’s Not the Tool that Matters Most But How One Uses It

Recent controversy around a Ryerson University student who created a study group on a social networking Web site reminded me of another episode where new technology played a similar role.  I think it will be useful to look at those past events to anticipate the progression of current developments. 

Back in late 90s, when personal home pages gained popularity, many students started displaying/sharing their academic papers on their personal Web spaces.  Some pushed this further, creating Web sites with vast databases of member-submitted student papers and even providing a marketplace where students could buy and sell paper-writing services.  At first, this seemed to be the end of education as we know it, at least to some – there were discussions in academia about banning Internet access in educational institutions or even dropping written assignments as a form of assessment. 

However, within just a few years educators realized that paper-trading and plagiarism were not actually caused by the Internet. The Internet, as a powerful new channel, empowered everything, regardless of ethics or intent, and individuals could make right or wrong decisions.  This realization shifted the focus from the frustrations to educational objectives and led to a number of positive developments, such as increased attention to plagiarism and proper academic conduct.  Many institutions decided to revise their honor codes and other policies to make them more clear and up-to-date, and some adopted technology, such as SafeAssign, to boost their efforts in both raising student awareness about plagiarism and deterring cheating.  In the end, written assignments are still an important method of assessment, and educators actually encourage students to use the Internet to showcase their written work via electronic portfolios, blogs and Wikis. 

I expect student collaboration via social networking follows a very similar path, but much quicker.  The education community is now much more open to innovation and is quickly realizing that social networking is a powerful and valuable concept that can facilitate many collaboration scenarios, most of which are legitimate and productive.  In the end, it’s not the tool that matters most but how one uses it.

The Web Through an Educational Filter

I have been doing a lot of research lately on UC Berkeley and my web searches have returned some helpful information, but only the basics really:  the institutional website, wikipedia entries, local information, etc.  And this, of course, all came from page 1 of the 52,800,000 Google results (and I am not even exaggerating).

But I was really trying to get a sense of Berkeley from a educational perspective - what sorts of ideologies do they hold, how cutting edge are they, what are some of the projects going on there? I am sure all of that is on the institutional website but it's tough to get a true sense of the flavor through that site. And I definitely didn't find that information in page one of my millions of Google results, and let's be honest, how many of us ever go past page one?  Not me, it's too intimidating!

Naturally, I also did my search on Scholar®.  I got back 25 results and they all were focused around education.  Now this is what I am talking about!  I learned that Berkeley has begun offering some classes through YouTube and iTunes - very cool, very cutting edge.  There are also sample course descriptions and insights into some really exciting projects and more.

I have noticed this a lot with Scholar. I can search for something on Google and peruse page one of my billions of results and find general information, spend time browsing through the results or take some guesses on how to refine my search...or I can simply search on Scholar to find a much more manageable set of resources that are almost all related to education. It makes the web much more relevant and manageable for my needs.

That's really what Scholar is all about.  The whole idea is to enable academic resource storing and sharing among people with the common focus of education...a "validated network", if you will. All Scholar users are instructors, students or staff from educational institutions and therefore you can consider most of the resources on Scholar "vetted".  It certainly saves me time and effort in a lot of the research I do everyday.

Now of course, Scholar is based on an architecture of participation.  The more people actively use it, the more valuable it becomes.  So therefore, sometimes there aren't many resources for a particular topic I search for.  So in those instances, I go back to Google and refine my search and when I finally find a resource, I use the Scholar It! bookmarklet to add it to my Scholar collection with one click and then go on browsing for more.  That way I am not only saving those resources, that I did the work to find, for future use, but I am helping to build out Scholar and sharing resources that other people can use and benefit from.  Scholar is a very rewarding give take relationship for me. :)

Now you might be asking why a Senior Manager of Operations at Blackboard is researching Berkeley?  Great question.  I actually just found out that I was accepted there for graduate school in Information Architecture / Experience Design!  Fun exciting stuff, I will definitely keep you posted. :)

Visiting Scholar

No, not that type of visiting scholar who sets up residence at your campus for a short while.  We've been visiting campuses who are using Scholar by Blackboard.  Why?  Well, to see how people are using it.  The concept of sharing academic resources using a social bookmarking application may seem obvious to some who stay very current with new tools on the web.  However, we knew from earlier research that even students who use Facebook or play the latest games don't necessarily have experience using this type of tool or with why they would use it.  There were two things that came out of the conversations that were particularly notable (and maybe surprising to those of you who subscribe to RSS feeds of blogs).

First, it seems that not everyone is using the bookmarklet.  This matters because it's what makes bookmarking sites so easy.

. . . Because Technology Brings Education to More People

Joining Blackboard and its Product Strategy team was a big professional change for me, which prompted a new habit of periodically reflecting on my work in this new role.  One of the more interesting reflections was trying to understand how my work is something more than earning my pay and increasing shareholder value for the company.

It all seems to be right on the surface – Product Strategy analyses current client pains and general trends to advise the rest of the company on how to optimize existing product offerings and/or come up with new products that would cover current and future client needs.  We are clients’ ambassadors in Blackboard – we translate client voices into plans and products.  Great, isn’t it? 

But I could not stop at this “mother love and apple pie” level.  Digging a little bit deeper, it becomes evident that there is a counterpoint.  Some view technological solutions to a wider range of pains only as increasing technology overhead, pushing the costs of education up and making it less affordable without giving much in return.  With the multitude of electronic tools available to academia today, it’s easy to make a point that if all these technological aids really worked, people who graduated a decade or two ago would be Neanderthals compared to current generation of students.  Apparently, this is not the case – so is this point valid? 

The Blog Habit

Hi, my name is Greg, and I'm a blog addict.

I admit it. I check the feeds of the blogs I subscribe to in Google Reader before I hop in the shower in the mornings. At lunchtime, you'll find me sitting at my desk, sandwich in hand, scrolling through the morning's posts and spamming my colleagues with forwarded tidbits that I've gleaned from my mid-day dose. And usually at some point in the late afternoon, as the meetings and decisions and deliverables wear me down, stepping away from it all to check the blogs again usually nets me some new idea that gives me a rush, reminds me why I love the field of educational technology, and energizes me enough to get me through the rest of the day.

So this time around, I've decided to share a list of some of the educational technology blogs that make up part of my daily fix. What follows, in no particular order, are twenty of the best education blogs as judged by . . . well, me. It's a totally subjective list and it's by no means exhaustive, but all of these authors post regularly and all of them have introduced me to great new ideas at one point or another. But if you should get hooked yourself, you can't say I didn't warn you. ;-)

Wikis Rock!

We use wikis internally at Blackboard for project management, development and operations among other things, and in the last year or so they’ve really taken root company-wide.  As more and more people have started using them, we have moved from a culture of "information control" to one of shared information and openness.

I have to admit, at first it was a little nerve wracking to put all of my project plans and ideas out there for the whole company to see.  But in doing so, it created more of a sense of accountability and confidence.  No longer was I only compiling information for myself or to convey to my immediate team, but I found myself being more succinct and thorough so that anyone could understand the plan and reasoning behind it.  I was forced to think things through even more than before and make decisions more on fact and research, less on assumptions.  And of course, I then referenced and linked out to the sources of those facts and research findings, thus spreading even more knowledge to my colleagues that they could then apply to their initiatives, as well.

Even more beneficial is the opportunity for those colleagues reading my work to provide feedback and suggestions.  I have had numerous occasions where someone from another department read my launch plan on the wiki and offered insight to a novel approach they had seen at a conference, or offered experiences they have had that influenced me to alter my direction.  Instead of me just creating things in my own bubble, confined by my own knowledge and experiences, they helped me get to a more reasoned and weathered solution that had the support of the greater company behind it. 

New Plans for EducateInnovate in 2008

This year we bloggers at EducateInnovate will be working hard to improve the amount and type of information shared here.

We’ll be increasing the frequency of our posts; bringing in new voices from across the company to post regularly; inviting industry leaders and members of the global Blackboard community of users to participate directly in our blog by posting and commenting on posted entries and ed. tech. industry events; and adding new features to the site, such as multi-media functionality and a blogroll of the folks we’re reading.

The first step we’re taking is to help you more easily find the posts of greatest interest to you.  To complement the categories listed in the right column of our site, which we’ve been using as tags, each week we’ll have teams of bloggers dedicated to posting—a different team for every day of the work week (Monday—Friday):

• Monday — Members of the International Blackboard community
• Tuesday — Campus card solutions professionals
• Wednesday — Our Client Success initiative leaders (including Craig Chanoff and Jan Day)
• Thursday — The Blackboard Beyond team
• Friday — The K-12 e-Learning community

Gordon Freedman will continue to post while traveling to meet with e-Learning leaders around the world; and Kerry Jo Richards—a familiar face to many people throughout the global Blackboard community of users—will be posting this year about, and answering your questions on, all things BbWorld (our annual series of users conferences held around the globe).

Please let me know which of the posts you read here are of greatest interest or use to you, and any suggestions you may have for us in 2008.  Tell me what worked for you in 2007, and we’ll do more of it in ’08.  Also, if you’d like to contribute to EducateInnovate, let me know.  I can be contacted at blogfeedback@blackboard.com.

Get Your Feet Wet with Social Bookmarking and Networking

Social bookmarking (a.k.a. "tagging") and networking are noteworthy Web 2.0 technologies for a number of reasons.  A major one is that by allowing users to store online content, share it with others, and see content that others have collected, bookmarking and networking help educators and students move beyond the Google searches that are frequently mistaken for research.

And who doesn't want to help their students become better researchers?

Introducing EduGarage!

Hello World!  I have been waiting for this day to arrive for a long time.  Why?  Because after months of hard work by a dedicated team, today is the day we’re launching EduGarage TM.  EduGarage is the new website developed specifically for developers and is the latest release from the Blackboard Beyond Initiative TM. 

EduGarage is the home of the Blackboard Developer Network, a community of more than 2000 developers who create and share tools, applications and services for teaching and learning through Blackboard Building Blocks (R), Blackboard PowerLinks TM and Blackboard Language Packs.  Now there is one central website for this community to interact and collaborate.

The website is based on the feedback of the developer community.  Members said they wanted:

• a site that didn’t require a login and was open to anyone who wants to read information
• a wiki-based site that allowed for easy contributions and editing
• discussion forums where developers can ask questions and search for answers
• a way to connect with other developers to collaborate on projects
• a place to discover and contribute best practices, tutorials, documentation and other technical resources
• a site that was integrated with the Blackboard Download Center and Support Knowledge Bases
• a place to contribute and store sample code and open source code to share with the community

Welcome to EduGarage, a website and a community for everyone that developers can access and add to the content and communication, and then share all of that knowledge and experience with the rest of the education world. 

Please visit the site.  If you have questions, drop us a line at edugarage@blackboard.com.

If you are in Seattle for the Educause 2007 Conference please stop by the Blackboard booth, see a demo and enter to win a new iPod nano.

Explore Social Networking and Bookmarking with Blackboard

Bravo! is a new program in which Blackboard users and employees explore new ideas and share information, insights and real-world experiences with e-Learning – and try to have a little fun in the process.

We’re kicking off an exploration of social networking and bookmarking, and Erin Knight and John Morrison of the Blackboard Beyond team have agreed to be our trusty guides.

Spread the word about these events - everyone is welcome:

Webinar #1 – October 9
Introducing Scholar - Social Bookmarking & Networking In Education
Time: 1:00-2:00 p.m. (ET)
Led by John Morrison, Blackboard Beyond team
Register now: http://tinyurl.com/2z7mmq (password = bravo)

Webinar #2 – October 16
So Now What? Ideas, Best Practices & Thoughts on Scholar and It’s Potential in Education
Time: 1:00-2:00 p.m. (ET)
Led by Erin Knight and John Morrison, Blackboard Beyond team
Register now: http://tinyurl.com/26fnd6 (password = bravo)

Please stop by the Bravo site to ask a question or share some of your educational uses of social networking and bookmarking.

We’ll record both events should you miss them.

Putting More Social into our Social Software

I'm happy to announce (if you haven't already seen the press release or received the email announcement, that is), that my team, the Blackboard Beyond Initiative, rolled out a batch of new features for Scholar. These features focus on around enhanced profiles, user search, and social networking capabilities.

You know, when we first launched Scholar we talked about it as a social bookmarking application. And that's not inaccurate -- Scholar is a social bookmarking application. However, after we launched, I realized that "social bookmarking" isn't a term that's meaningful to most Blackboard users. Some informal, non-scientific surveys conducted by a few of our client institutions even indicated that only a few percent of their student users on campus were familiar with social bookmarking as a concept or with social bookmarking applications.