Developers+

I have been doing a lot of research lately on UC Berkeley and my web searches have returned some helpful information, but only the basics really:  the institutional website, wikipedia entries, local information, etc.  And this, of course, all came from page 1 of the 52,800,000 Google results (and I am not even exaggerating).

But I was really trying to get a sense of Berkeley from a educational perspective – what sorts of ideologies do they hold, how cutting edge are they, what are some of the projects going on there? I am sure all of that is on the institutional website but it’s tough to get a true sense of the flavor through that site. And I definitely didn’t find that information in page one of my millions of Google results, and let’s be honest, how many of us ever go past page one?  Not me, it’s too intimidating!

Naturally, I also did my search on Scholar®.  I got back 25 results and they all were focused around education.  Now this is what I am talking about!  I learned that Berkeley has begun offering some classes through YouTube and iTunes – very cool, very cutting edge.  There are also sample course descriptions and insights into some really exciting projects and more.

I have noticed this a lot with Scholar. I can search for something on Google and peruse page one of my billions of results and find general information, spend time browsing through the results or take some guesses on how to refine my search…or I can simply search on Scholar to find a much more manageable set of resources that are almost all related to education. It makes the web much more relevant and manageable for my needs.

That’s really what Scholar is all about.  The whole idea is to enable academic resource storing and sharing among people with the common focus of education…a "validated network", if you will. All Scholar users are instructors, students or staff from educational institutions and therefore you can consider most of the resources on Scholar "vetted".  It certainly saves me time and effort in a lot of the research I do everyday.

Now of course, Scholar is based on an architecture of participation.  The more people actively use it, the more valuable it becomes.  So therefore, sometimes there aren’t many resources for a particular topic I search for.  So in those instances, I go back to Google and refine my search and when I finally find a resource, I use the Scholar It! bookmarklet to add it to my Scholar collection with one click and then go on browsing for more.  That way I am not only saving those resources, that I did the work to find, for future use, but I am helping to build out Scholar and sharing resources that other people can use and benefit from.  Scholar is a very rewarding give take relationship for me.

Now you might be asking why a Senior Manager of Operations at Blackboard is researching Berkeley?  Great question.  I actually just found out that I was accepted there for graduate school in Information Architecture / Experience Design!  Fun exciting stuff, I will definitely keep you posted.

It takes a lot of work to organize a conference.  There are so many moving parts, a constantly shifting timeline, and an increasing number of staff and vendors to keep on track and working to the project plan.  Each year we get a little better at it and this year is no exception.  BbWorld ’08 in Las Vegas is going to be great. 

So I thought folks might enjoy a little behind the scenes look at BbWorld.  Here is a screen shot of the conference registration page before it went live yesterday.  Can you spot our mistake?  Don’t worry, we caught it in time.  Just. 

Hope to see you in July!

I was recently visiting a Blackboard client in Canada.  During my visit, with a Blackboard product expert, we demonstrated the capabilities of the Grade Center in the Blackboard Academic Suite Version 8.  We met with faculty members to discuss its new features, and since the IT staff wanted to do a hardware upgrade at the same time, we met with system administrators to discuss the technical requirements of the implementation.

During the course of the day, the director of academic technology posed a question about how the institution was going to measure the success of the implementation.  Ideas were thrown around about:

• Measuring the number of active users
• How many faculty members they could get to use the new features
• The number of active courses as a percentage of total sections
• The number of discussion posts

All of these seemed like legitimate ways to determine if the system is being used.  Finally, the director spoke and asked how they would determine if this was truly impacting the student and teaching experience for the better:

• Are students enjoying their experience more?
• Retaining more information?
• Are they connecting with classmates and the faculty more efficiently?
• Is it truly impacting curriculum planning for future terms?

These questions started a great discussion about the real, positive impact products can have on the teaching and learning experience.  Soon ideas were flying around the room about figuring out ways to have a more meaningful measurement on the teaching and learning experience.

One discussion that particularly caught my attention was very close to my heart: measuring success by tracking the faculty and student support help desk tickets.

BlackboardTV (or "BbTV") is a new, multimedia initiative to help e-Learning innovators — designers, instructors, students — visualize online teaching and learning.

Look for BbTV crew members filming during BbWorld Commerce ’08 in Phoenix (March 9-12), and at DevCon ’08 and BbWorld ’08 in Las Vegas (July 14-15 and July 15-18, respectively).  We’ve archived a wealth of video resources at the BlackboardTV Channel on YouTube, and each Saturday we’ll post a video here on EducateInnovate, such as:

• Works about the global Blackboard community of users created by BbTV producers
• Instructional videos produced by Blackboard users, with tips for teaching and learning online
• Thought-provoking or witty clips about education and technology
• Cool videos we stumble across and just plain like

For our first recommendation, it seems appropriate to post a brief (1:35) informational video created by McDaniel College and posted originally to YouTube, demonstrating how to add a YouTube clip to your Blackboard environment:

McDaniel College, a private, four-year liberal arts college with 1,600 students, is located in Westminster, MD, about 30 miles northwest of Baltimore.  Thanks, McDaniel, for sharing your knowledge and helping us in the Blackboard community visualize e-Learning!

We invite you to share with BbTV suggestions for videos that should be featured here on EducateInnovate.  No clip is too short; no video, too funny!  Send your videos to us, or links to clips you like, at BbTV@blackboard.com.

Hi, my name is Greg, and I’m a blog addict.

I admit it. I check the feeds of the blogs I subscribe to in Google Reader before I hop in the shower in the mornings. At lunchtime, you’ll find me sitting at my desk, sandwich in hand, scrolling through the morning’s posts and spamming my colleagues with forwarded tidbits that I’ve gleaned from my mid-day dose. And usually at some point in the late afternoon, as the meetings and decisions and deliverables wear me down, stepping away from it all to check the blogs again usually nets me some new idea that gives me a rush, reminds me why I love the field of educational technology, and energizes me enough to get me through the rest of the day.

So this time around, I’ve decided to share a list of some of the educational technology blogs that make up part of my daily fix. What follows, in no particular order, are twenty of the best education blogs as judged by . . . well, me. It’s a totally subjective list and it’s by no means exhaustive, but all of these authors post regularly and all of them have introduced me to great new ideas at one point or another. But if you should get hooked yourself, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.