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Enhancing education through innovation is at the heart of everything we do at Blackboard. From our beginnings where we produced one of the first learning management systems (LMS) in higher education, we’ve expanded into K-12, adult learning and international markets while also broadening our product focus to include mobile learning, collaboration tools, analytics and more. As Blackboard Learn President, Ray Henderson, wrote about on his blog, Blackboard’s Next Act: Opening the Lens on Our Vision for Education, “we believe that to help build a better education experience we need to continue to expand our products and services in areas across the institution. There is a new form of innovation taking root in our organization as we rethink how we can better serve educators by considering new ways to tackle some of the biggest challenges they face.”

We talk to senior technology officials all the time who tell us about the decisions they are making on their campus every day. Realizing that these are decisions that leaders face all across the country, Blackboard wants to bring these like-minded individuals together for a brand new event. We’re excited to invite senior technology executives and chief information offers to the CIO Networking & Symposium event this summer, at BbWorld 2011.

Guest Post by Alison Marcoff, Assistant Director, eLearning Support & Training, Florida Atlantic University Are you totally unfazed by the idea of upgrading from Blackboard Learn™ Release 8 to Release 9.1?  Do you think that your faculty will adjust easily and thank you for making their lives easier?   Do you think your life will be stress-free once you make the switch?  If so, then maybe you should just skip this presentation…. No, wait—maybe this presentation is actually perfect for you.  You need a wake-up call!

As someone who taught elementary school for 6 years, I was very excited to spend a few hours with Kristin Kipp, the Online Teacher of the Year.  Kristin teaches 11^th and 12^th grade English at Jefferson County Colorado’s Virtual Academy.  She previously taught in a traditional school and now loves teaching fully online. I am most curious about her day-to-day interactions with other teachers and her students.  She says she “lives in Blackboard.”  However, while the bells and whistles of online learning attracted her to teaching, it is clearly the students who keep her hooked.  As many teachers do, Kristin fills with enthusiasm when describing her students who might not otherwise graduate without the Virtual Academy – those with medical issues, those who had family obligations, and those training to be elite athletes.  In fact, students led her to online teaching.  She left the classroom to be an Instructional Coach and missed teaching.  One of the ways that Kristin shares her belief in her students is by making it clear to them that online learning is not easy and that her standards are high for each one of them.

Originally posted by Lisa Regelman on The Mobile Garage We really enjoyed reading the blog post by Tim Flood, Senior Technology Consultant and Program Manager, Stanford Mobile Program, just published as part of EDUCAUSE’s 5-Day Mobile Computing Sprint. In his article, “Who is driving the influx of new technologies?,” Tim provides expert advice to university technologists when it comes to deploying (and embracing) vendor technologies to transform business processes. A brief excerpt: