Higher Ed

Guest Blog Post by Shelley Kinash, Associate Professor of Higher Education and Director of Quality, Teaching, and Learning at Bond University

G’Day Eh! That’s my mash-up greeting from a dual Australian/Canadian Citizen. I am an Associate Professor of Higher Education and Director of Quality, Teaching, and Learning at Bond University on the beautiful Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. I have been an academic for eighteen years and did my PhD in Education Technology at University of Calgary, Canada. Bond University is very proud and honoured to have been selected to receive the 2012 Mobile Catalyst Award. Another claim to fame is that Bond University was the first Australian university to go live with Blackboard Mobile Learn. Bond is hosting the Blackboard 2012 Australasia Teaching and Learning Conference in August.

With numerous digital learning content options available to educators, figuring out how and when to get started with adopting and using digital content can seem daunting. Blackboard has invited experts from a variety of fields to participate in BbWorld 2012 to help you navigate this broad content landscape. Instructional designers, faculty and technology decision makers will find these sessions beneficial and enjoyable!

1. Alan November,  an international and renowned leader in education technology, will push the boundaries on how to improve online teaching and learning in higher education. His wit and humor make him a highly sought after presenter in education forums worldwide.

Last week the IMS Global Learning Consortium announced its certification of the Basic LTI 1.1 standard, and at this week’s IMS Learning Impact conference in Toronto you’ll hear much more from the standards organization about this new standard. For those of you not familiar, LTI stands for Learning Tools Interoperability. The LTI standard allows for third-party tool providers to easily plug their applications into Blackboard Learn and other learning management systems. I’m a musician at heart, so when I explain LTI I often use Noteflight as an example. Noteflight is an online music writing application that lets you create, view, print and hear music notation with professional quality, right in your web browser. Since Noteflight supports the LTI standard, a music teacher can create composition-based assignment and grade the assignment all within Blackboard Learn. That’s just one example! The LTI standard has been used by educators to integrate content from other providers into their courses creating truly rich course content. At Blackboard we’ve prided ourselves on rapid implementation of IMS standards, and Basic LTI 1.1 is no different. Blackboard’s support of IMS open standards demonstrates a continuing commitment to creating a learning management system devoted to interoperability and openness. We continue to work with the IMS Global Consortium to expand standards support in our software and lead in the establishment of other industry standards.

BbWorld 2012, Blackboard’s education technology conference, is happening this summer in New Orleans! And we called upon you to be our VIP bloggers from the event! We received over 30 blog entries as part of this contest so, before I announce the winners, I would like to call attention to some of the incredible posts we received. Every single entry was creative in its own way. Aside from blogging four separate times, Laura Orsetti from Frontier Nursing University, blogged while holding her 23-month old on her lap! JD Ferries-Rowe from Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School, an Edline user, not only has a lot to say about BYOT (bring your own technology) but he’s excited for some olive sauce on his muffaletta (must be a NOLA thing). And, Kelt Dockins from University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a 2012 Golden Catalyst Award winner for Innovative Development definitely had the coolest blog layout that I’ve seen Well enough stalling… It is my great pleasure to announce the following individuals as the BbWorld 2012 VIP Bloggers!

The following post is written by guest blogger Kenneth Rogers. Kenneth has served as the Blackboard Administrator at University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) for the past three years.  With over 7 years in the E-Learning Industry, Kenneth has a passion for emerging technologies and seeing how technology can enhance education.

Almost three years ago, I was at Blackboard World in DC with a co-worker when Blackboard Mobile was first unveiled.  As soon as we returned to San Antonio, we continued the dialogue with the Mobile team and proceeded with the first phase of UIW Mobile.

A short three months after we signed our agreement, UIW v.1.0 was live in the Apple App Store. Download our app to check it out here: Android: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.blackboard.android.central.incarnate&hl=en Blackberry: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/6768 iOS: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/uiw/id347428414?mt=8# Others: http://m.uiwtx.edu/