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Petoskey, Michigan, is a quintessential small town. Situated on Lake Michigan some ~270 miles north of Detroit, the landscape also once provided muse for Ernest Hemingway, who spent time in Northern Michigan as a child.

North Central Michigan College (NCMC), like Hemingway, also calls Petoskey home. The campus is a stone’s throw from Little Traverse Bay, and currently operates in service of ~2700 students and a smaller number of full time instructors.

For Chris Cerrudo, Assistant Dean of Instructional Technology at the College, the size of his institution means a relative technology budget, and an even more demanding headcount constraint. These factors, as well as a pretty enticing product set, led to the selection of the ANGEL LMS for the College in 2008.

“ANGEL just fit our needs perfectly at the time,” Cerrudo explained. “For our institution, the software package and the community surrounding ANGEL was just fantastic.”

When Blackboard purchased ANGEL Learning the following year, an LMS evaluation process was set in motion for North Central Michigan to decide the next step for the College, with resource constraints again top of mind.

“By 2011 we had looked at many different products and had a lot of options,” Cerrudo continued. “Blackboard Learn was considered but a few open source and cloud-based options were attractive, given the limited resources we had at the College.”

Watch Chris Cerrudo Discuss NCMC’s Migration from ANGEL to Blackboard Learn on ANGEL Office Hours:

DevCon 2013 in Las Vegas is open to anyone, of course, but it wouldn’t be possible without the geeks of the (Bb) world, not to mention the nerds and techies. You know who you are. At least you should.

But if you don’t…we have help.

Get started to determine not only what your GQ (Geek Quotient) is but also how you will fit in at DevCon, then stick around after for some hints about what you can look forward to there:

Even those who think Jar-Jar Binks was a welcome addition to the Star Wars universe are welcome.

We asked teachers to brag about their classrooms, which now gives us the chance to brag about teachers.

Blackboard K-12 held a blog contest to give schools a chance to tell us about technology strategies they’ve implemented to engage students in new ways. We are proud to announce our two #BragAboutYourClassroom blog contest winners.

Congratulations Grand Prize Winner Carol Cochuyt!

Carol grew up on a small family farm outside of Orion, Illinois and graduated from Orion High School, Black Hawk College, and Western Illinois University. Yes, that does mean her students learn how to make butter every year – even her virtual students! She is certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards as an Early Childhood Generalist. Carol serves as the K-2 Department Head at Clay Virtual Academy, which is a part of the Clay County School District in Florida. Currently her Kindergarten students are meeting in the Virtual Classroom daily to practice their Completion Ceremony songs.

Read Carol’s winning blog: I’m Proud to be a Virtual Kindergarten Teacher

Congratulations Runner-Up Elissa Raffa!

Elissa Raffa has a B.S. in Secondary Science Education and an M.F.A. in Creative and Professional Writing, both from the University of Minnesota. She is licensed as a school superintendent as well as a teacher of physical science, physics and chemistry. A founding director of Minnesota Online High School, Ms. Raffa has been active in arts education as well as science education. Before starting MNOHS, she developed and taught courses for seven years with the Mindquest Learning Network in Bloomington and for twelve years at Loring Nicollet Alternative School in Minneapolis. She is a member of the Minnesota Online Learning Advisory Council and has been active state-wide in preparing pre-service and in-service teachers for the rigors of online education. During her first seven years at MNOHS, Ms. Raffa supervised the faculty and the learning program, and guided the development of high-quality, interactive online instruction and assessment in all content areas, using state-of-the-art technologies. She began serving as Executive Director in August, 2012.

Read Elissa’s blog: Traffic Cop: My love affair with webinar

Thank you to all of our #BragAboutYourClassroom blog contest participants.

To see how we are closing the gap between the way students live and the way they learn, follow @Blackboardk12..

Every day, an estimated 160,000 children miss school due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students– an alarming, disheartening statistic. The good news is that the vast majority of students already have a bullying prevention tool in their pocket. We just need to give them a way to use it.

That’s why Blackboard is proud to announce today that we are offering TipTxt, a two-way anti-bullying service for students to confidentially notify school officials of bullying or school safety issues, to every K-12 school in the U.S. for free. All schools need is a dedicated phone line, and Blackboard will absorb all other costs. We’ve never done something on this scale, and no company has made such an offer. To add even greater visibility to this effort, we are thrilled to be partnering with the National PTA.

You did it again.

You suggested.

And we did it again.

We listened.

So we (and you) are happy to introduce our latest join venture, Blackboard Collaborate 12.5. Your product suggestions help make this the most effective version yet.

You recently heard from my counterpart Trent about Blackboard Collaborate Mobile on Android, including Kindle Fire HD, and easy conversion of session recordings to MP3/MP4 formats.  But that’s not all that is new. All that is new