Higher Ed

Did you watch this year’s Super Bowl?  The New York Giants vs. the undefeated New England Patriots in Arizona: what a game and what an amazing ending — a dramatic come from behind victory in the final minute of the biggest game (and sporting event) of the year.  What more could you ask for?  It was truly one of the most riveting spectacles I have witnessed in the past 30 years.

You have to love big events like that.  They bring people together from all across the country and even across the world.  And that one game is a special opportunity to share “water cooler” conversation with people you may not get to talk with very often around the office, campus, school . . . “Hey, did you see that game last night!  Wow!”

Well, the Super Bowl got me thinking . . . What other big events are there this year that will garner as much attention – sure, there’s the NASCAR championship series, maybe March Madness, the World Series . . . Ah, but before all of those events, there is another big event in Arizona, in just two weeks, that’s sure to receive a huge amount of attention from the hundreds of people in attendance and, when those participants return to their respective campuses across the country, will influence millions of people in schools, colleges and universities nationwide: yep, BbWorld Commerce ’08!

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.

We have a winner – it’s the community. Actually, the team who received the award was Ball State University’s Cinema Arts Project. You can read about it in our press release about the project.  It’s a cool project for a number of reasons, but what I find most interesting is the fact that the end product of what they create will help hundreds of Blackboard institutions connect to virtual worlds.

We recently published the February 2008 issue of the Blackboard Commerce Bulletin, our quarterly newsletter designed specifically for users of Blackboard’s campus card solutions.

The issue is full of content, including:

• New Year update from Russ Carlson, president of the Blackboard Commerce group
• Preview of BbWorld Commerce ’08, to be held in Phoenix, March 9–12
• Details of the new Blackboard–Sony partnership created to offer contactless card technology to Blackboard clients
• Profile of Grand Rapids Community College in Western Michigan, focusing on how the school is improving its on-campus services
• Profile of Western State College of Colorado, which recently migrated its Blackboard Transaction System from a Unix to a Universal edition
• Product updates in the Blackboard Commerce Suite

We’re very interested in hearing which type of articles you find to be the most useful.  Please send your feedback and story suggestions to blogfeedback@blackboard.com.