Developers+

How can you do more with Blackboard? Many platforms now offer application integrations to enhance their core technology offering. For Blackboard clients, that’s no different. Blackboard Extensions offers a variety of Blackboard Building Block applications that can be seamlessly integrated into the Blackboard Learn platform. This week, you can learn more about our partners Prometric and SymposiumLIVE by attending two free webinars.

Prometric provides secure testing and assessment services; their session will focus on strategies that allow colleges and universities to offer online programs while validating and confirming student identity and protecting course exam content. To register, click here.

SymposiumLIVE allows you to manage, publish and host multimedia by leveraging a content delivery network of 73,000 servers worldwide. Their presentation will explore possible uses and benefits of video, both inside and outside the classroom environment. To register, click here.

Tuesday, October 26^th 2-3PM EST

Webinar: Theft, Threats and Cheating: Ensuring Security in the Online Education Process

Register Now HERE 

 

Thursday, October 28^th 2-3PM EST

Webinar: SymposiumLIVE- Education Unleashed

Register Now HERE

Almost any recent article or blog post about textbooks echoes the refrain from students and faculty that textbooks are expensive. So, the growing trend by publishers is to offer digital versions of textbooks (eTextbooks) as lower priced options. However, many of these publishers only offer this content in exclusive platforms preventing broad adoption.

There are significant savings associated with eTextbooks: students can save up to 50% versus the cost of a textbook, they lighten the load by eliminating the need to carry books, handouts and notes from class to class, and not to mention, are better for the environment. Barnes & Noble’s NOOKstudy is a new, free eTextbook reader application that offers one platform (and one login) to a user’s complete digital reading library.

Thanks in part to Charles Leonhardt’s vision, ShareStream has become a valuable tool to deliver audio and video content at Georgetown University over the past four and half years. Mr. Leonhardt, Georgetown’s Principal Technologist, serves as the university’s strategic lead, and consequently biggest cheerleader, for its rich media initiative. Developed in collaboration with Georgetown University, the ShareStream Rich Media Platform provides a turnkey system for creating, editing, storing, managing and securely delivering rich media assets.  Rich media is at the core of developing 21st century skills and is a valuable addition to the overall teaching and learning experience.  Through a tight integration with Blackboard Learn™, faculty, students and administrators can seamlessly integrate cutting-edge media into online course delivery.

Now that we have all settled back into our daily routines post Bb DevCon and BbWorld I thought I would take a few moments to get some thoughts out about the conference and what is to come.

The Developer conference was awesome. The conversations were (as usual) stellar and I brought back several suggestions and ideas for improvements Blackboard can make for the developer community. Some of these I will write about here in the future.

OpenDB!

The buzz generated by the announcement of the OpenDB initiative was better than I could have hoped for. To date Blackboard has seen over 300 unique views on the database documentation – adding proof that this is a valuable resource and will become even more useful as we all move forward with work around reporting and Building Block development. Some questions have come up around OpenDB and I will try to address them here.

Access to digital content is becoming increasingly important in higher education. Students expect the same level of performance and flexibility from campus book stores that they experience with all of their other online content – music, photographs and videos. During BbWorld 2010, Blackboard announced a new partnership with Follett Higher Education Group to enable educators and learners to access Follett’s CaféScribe eBook platform from within the Blackboard Learn™ platform via the free Follett CaféScribe Blackboard Building Block™.  For the first time, students can now find, buy, use and discuss digital books within their course management system environment.