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I recently had the privilege to accept the Learning Impact Platinum Award, along with Dr. Sam Slike of Bloomsburg University, at the IMS Global Learning Impact Conference for the design and implementation of an online program that improves access and delivery of specialized education. The Learning Impact Awards are designed to recognize the most impactful use of technology worldwide in support of learning. Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania uses the Wimba platform (a Blackboard Collaborate solution) to facilitate a fully online Masters in Education program for school-based speech-language pathologists. By facilitating a full-online program, Wimba has allowed Bloomsburg to double graduate-level degrees in Speech-Language Pathology – helping address a severe shortage in teachers qualified to work with special needs students in Pennsylvania’s elementary schools.

At Blackboard, we pride ourselves in being a company that improves the educational experience for learners all over the world. So we were humbled and honored this month when we were notified that the company had won the prestigious Presidential “E” Award for exports. Presented to companies for their outstanding contributions to growing U.S. exports, strengthening the economy and creating American jobs, the “E” Award is the highest U.S. government honor given for increasing exports.

Ray Henderson, President Blackboard Learn, delivered the keynote at Blackboard’s 2011 Teaching + Learning Conference at the University of Leeds earlier this Spring. More than 200 clients across EMEA came together to network with their peers and to hear from Blackboard about the latest product and support innovations happening across platforms. If you missed Ray’s keynote, you can view it here in its entirety. We were also fortunate to have Dr. Sugata Mitra, from Newcastle University deliver the second keynote. Dr. Mitra has spoken at TED and his “Hole in the Wall” research inspired the book “Slumdog Millionaire.”  You can view Dr. Mitra’s keynote here.

Statements regarding our product development initiatives, including new products and future product upgrades, updates or enhancements represent our current intentions, but may be modified, delayed or abandoned without prior notice and there is no assurance that such offering, upgrades, updates or functionality will become available unless and until they have been made generally available to our customers.

I recently sat down with George Kroner and Mark O’Neil, two of our technical developers, to go deep into Open Standards. At the end of December, Blackboard announced and delivered support for both Common Cartridge and LTI standards, securing endorsement from IMS Global and the industry at large. If you’re still trying to figure out what Open Standards mean, I recommend that you start with Julie Kelleher’s blog post, “Open Standards for Newbies.” For a more in-depth, in-person lesson on Open Standards join us at DevCon in July where our Open Standards experts will be on hand delivering a number of sessions devoted to Open Standards and how they will help shape the future of your learning management system. If you can’t wait till DevCon, check out our conversation below…

In April, I had the opportunity to work with a number of K-12 school leaders and Blackboard staff at the Blackboard K-12 Executive Symposium in New York City. This event was co-hosted by our partner, NBC Learn, at the NBC studios at “30 Rock”. We spent 2 days exploring the critical issues K-12 leaders face, how Blackboard can help them meet these challenges, and how some of their peers are already using Blackboard solutions to address these issues. See photos below.