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See how to win a free trip to BbWorld 2013!

Building—and launching—a career is a team effort.

Students, of course, are responsible for finding their own internships and jobs.

Career services offices, of course, provide resources to do this.

But a third ally in this quest may be less obvious: Blackboard System Administrators. In fact, you Sys Admins wield more power than you may realize.

Simply by downloading and installing the Internships.com building block during the busiest time for applying to summer internships and jobs, you are opening up countless opportunities for your students. One small click for you, one giant leap for student-kind.

It’s all about access. You and only you can unlock this veritable treasure trove of Internship listings within the Blackboard Learn environment for students.

 

 

As if that is not incentive enough, doing so can win you a paid trip to BbWorld 2013 in Las Vegas, where you will learn more ways to help the student body—and yourself.

Enter in two easy steps:

1. Download and install the Internships.com building block by March 22, 2013.

2. Let us know you installed it.

We are here if you have questions. Either way, let’s help get these kids some respectable work.

Every year you ask yourself “Is there still a benefit in attending edtech conferences?” Meanwhile, your manager may be asking “What new ways can you get professional development in education?” No matter what your role, you can get the most bang for your budget while getting the professional development and edtech refresher you need simply by acting on these suggestions:

1. Prioritize edtech conferences that prioritize peer networking and training sessions. You will naturally gravitate toward conferences that focus on the practical tech tools you rely on daily, but you stand to gain even more when the conference also offers extensive hands-on learning from both industry experts and peers.
2. Determine what you can better do online vs. in person. Sure, plenty of webinars and podcasts out there provide quick updates. But when looking to make meaningful connections and boost knowledge efficiently, nothing compares to an in-the-flesh discussion over coffee (or breakfast, or a drink at happy hour). Though we are a digital company, we know the value of human interaction.

The following is a guest blog post with Terry Patterson. Terry is the Blackboard Learn system administrator at the University of Missouri. As a seasoned Blackboard Learn veteran of nine years, he started a blog called Blackboardguru.com where he provides valuable insight to other Blackboard Learn system administrators.

Whether you’re just getting started as a Blackboard System Administrator or are a veteran like myself, here are three pieces of information to take with you on your LMS journey:

1. Learn by doing. When I started my work as a Blackboard admin, I never attended official training for the first year or so.  While I highly recommend getting training, it’s the time and effort that you spend learning about Blackboard that will make you a lifesaver to a faculty member or student.  It’s been almost 10 years since I first logged into Blackboard and everyday I’m still learning something new about it.

I was fortunate to attend an excellent panel discussion at Bbworld a few weeks ago entitled, “How to Build a Virtual School.” The panel was made of up five virtual learning experts, including Tambre Tondryk of Clark County Public Schools’ Virtual High School, Jack Hawkins and Doug Renfro of Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools’ Virtual School, and Linda Schriver and Ruth Paine of Clay County Public Schools’ Clay Virtual Academy.

While each virtual school represented came about for unique reasons and through various state legislation, they all have a common denominator: “It always starts from the top.” Every panelist agreed that in order for a virtual school to be successful, the first step is to get buy-in from executive administration. From there, you’ll receive the financial, technological and institutional support required to get your program off the ground and running.

In his BbWorld 2012 keynote address, Ray Henderson, Blackboard’s CTO and President of Academic Platforms, provided his annual report card on how Blackboard is doing against the fundamentals. Ray gave the Client Support fundamental a check plus, meaning we’re honoring the commitments we’ve made and we’ve made significant forward progress in improving the client support experience. Ray cited our improving close rates (fulfilling a promise from three years ago to bring them up to the level of ANGEL Learning), the benefits of the Upgrade Cohort Program for helping people with change management, and rising client satisfaction scores.

But that’s all our quantitative perspective.

The more important thing is: What do Blackboard clients think from a qualitative perspective? The pervasive opinion that we heard throughout BbWorld is that you agree; Client Support is fundamentally better than it was two or three years ago.