Developers+

On September 30, 2011, Blackboard Student Services- Killeen, Texas hosted U.S. Congressman John Carter and his staff to discuss ways education technology is empowering students, teachers and parents in the state of Texas—and the important role Blackboard Student Services plays in the student experience at higher ed institutions throughout the country.

• Blackboard employs ~400 Texans at our Killeen Blackboard Student Services call center
• Blackboard learning technologies are used at 83% of all Texas higher education institutions and 21% of all Texas school districts
• 1 in 3 Texans who are in public education are using Blackboard technology daily

It’s not often in life you see tangible or direct results. So many times projects are diluted, the original intent or scope changes or things beyond your control take over. Well, today I got to see an amazing result of our work which gave me goose-bumps. I manage the Blackboard Catalyst Awards and I love this program because I get to see the outstanding achievements of Blackboard clients that results in acknowledgment by our company. But what I *really* get excited about is when a client I know who is very deserving, receives accolades from their institution or organization.

Guest post by Eric Kunnen, Director of Distance Learning and Instructional Technologies, Grand Rapids Community College, and a member of the Ask Dr. C program, a free question and answer service for Blackboard users. Most faculty simply do not have time to learn costly, complex solutions for recording and distributing their lectures, but many tools can provide instructors with effective ways of redistributing classroom sessions and, ultimately, improve the learning experience for students. Typically, lecture capture utilities include a video of the computer screen and audio overlayed by the instructor. Occasionally, there is also video of the instructor or whiteboard/document camera which allows student to see what the faculty member is writing on the whiteboard or showing to the class through a video camera.  Lecture capture tools on the market today include Tegrity, echo360, MediaSite, Accordent Capture Station, Camtasia Relay, and even some open source options like Panopto*.

This fall, Northern Arizona University will join a group of over 1500 institutions that have adopted Blackboard Learn 9.1 as their learning management system. In an effort to understand their decision a little better, we met up with Dan Stoffel, Assistant Director of the e-Learning Center at the Northern Arizona University, to talk about his institution’s migration, planning and participation in various upgrade programs. “We are ahead of schedule by a couple weeks [on our migration]. The University chose Blackboard in late fall of 2010 and since then, we’ve been moving quite quickly to get our courses migrated over to Learn, 9.1.” –Dan Stoffel, Northern Arizona University

BbWorld in Las Vegas was a whirlwind of activity for Blackboard Clients, Partners and Employees alike. It was extremely difficult to pick a favorite moment out of a week spent at OSCELOT Open Source Day 6.0, DevCon 2011 and BbWorld 2011. There were certainly a few that stuck out. Dr. Chuck’s Blackboard tattoo and Matthew Small in a wedding dress with a Blackboard tattoo of his own certainly made for interesting conversations in the halls of the Venetian. From a Blackboard Partnerships perspective, the announcement of new and/or continued partnerships with all the major publishers, the Blackboard Developmental Education announcement and a new Premier Partner in Kaltura were surely highlights. That said, I am a self-proclaimed computer geek and the Blackboard Sponsor for TechBUG, so I wanted to take a few moments to recap our first meet-up in Sin City.