by Lynn Zingraf
We’re excited to announce that we’ll be holding an ANGEL Community Webinar on October 18th at 2:00 pm ET to share a client-influenced roadmap for the ANGEL LMS 8.0.
When we announced the indefinite extension of ANGEL’s end of life earlier this year, we also said we would invest in select enhancements to ANGEL 8.0. We held an ANGEL Suggestion Squad during the summer to solicit the community’s input to help us determine where to make those investments. The ANGEL Community Webinar is your opportunity to hear that input and learn where we’ll be investing in ANGEL 8.0 over the coming year.
by Sheryn Anthes
Today we announce the launch of a new MOOC powered by the CourseSites Open Course Series, Designing an Exemplary Course.
If you’re not familiar with the term MOOC (Massive Online Open Course), read on to learn how the latest (free) trend in Professional Development can impact your classroom instantly.
The newest addition to the CourseSites Open Course Series centers around the Exemplary Course Program (ECP) Rubric, which is a useful guide created by distinguished educators and instructional designers that will empower you to improve your online teaching experience. Whether you are just getting started or are an advanced online educator, this course will provide you with a framework to help identify and disseminate best practices for designing engaging online courses. But you will not be alone in your journey!
by Andi Perelman
Guest blog post from BbWorld 2012 Blogger, JD Ferries-Rowe. For additional content, click here.
Harnessing the Power of Social Media with @NMHS_Principal
Talk about a change…this session is what keynotes should be: focused on education, challenging and inspiring, with real-world examples and a smattering of sappy inspirational videos.
The lead in was a challenge: It is a problem that those who are tasked with leading our schools, with developing 21st century skills are sometimes the least knowledgeable. While a few schools are reinventing themselves for the digital age, most are not.
We want our teachers to be adapters, communicators, learners, visionaries, leaders, models, collaborators, and risk-takers. — whew. When you look at that list, it is overwhelming. But imagine if we created a system where the teachers who left the profession left because they did not fit that model, not because they were drained from 45 days of examinations per year or because their checklist evaluations combined with a metric of student-value-add indicated that they were only so-so. Its a stretch goal, but its achievable.
How do we start? We start by getting teachers to share their visions…by getting teachers to converse with others…by using social media.
Interesting point: Education is changing (collaborative, student centered), the landscape is changing (content overload, distributed learning opportunities, free sources), the learners are changing (connected, social learners, gamers, tech-as-default) — but education keeps looking the same.
He preached the #digcit mantra and talked about PLNs
by Harry Choi
We’re excited to share that Blackboard Managed Hosting was given top honors as the “Support Team of the Year” at the 10th Annual American Business Awards. The Awards took place June 19, at the Marriott Marquis Time Square in New York City where Blackboard was presented with the Gold Stevie® Award. Nicknamed the Stevies for the Greek word meaning “crowned”, the American Business Awards are the nation’s premier business awards for organizations operating in the US. Blackboard was selected from more than 3,000 nominees from organizations of all sizes. To be selected as a winner, companies were judged by more than 270 executives nationwide. Jason Minkoff, Senior Director of Managed Hosting and Support was on-hand to accept the award. “It was a fabulous time and I was thrilled to represent Blackboard and have our work acknowledged among the best in the country.”
Blackboard’s 2011 and 2012 customer satisfaction surveys reported unprecedented results from Blackboard Managed Hosting clients in overall satisfaction, willingness to recommend, and perceived value from our solutions. “These scores are a testament to the 250 dedicated experts across four continents that support over 1,000 managed hosting clients,” said Minkoff. “Because our team is skilled both in Blackboard applications and infrastructure design and management, we’re able to provide superior customer support and technical service to our clients.”
by Chris Borales
Blackboard Learn’s official release strategy has been to reserve odd-numbered service pack releases to maintenance and patches, but Blackboard Learn 9.1 Service Pack 9 changes up the model a bit. Service Pack 9 includes some features and enhancements that system administrators, other support staff and faculty will appreciate.
These features and enhancements include: support for the Common Cartridge 1.2 standard, a new Administrator Console, security and privacy enhancements as well as an update to the rubric feature.
Common Cartridge 1.2
I’m usually the guy that touts Blackboard’s continual support of LMS industry standards. With this release I’m proud to announce that, as of Service Pack 9, Blackboard Learn will support the Common Cartridge 1.2 standard. Common Cartridge 1.2 allows users to export their course content including Basic LTI integrations and standards aligned content.
