K-12

Okay, so this post is probably better named "Scholar Tip #1" since I have never posted any Scholar tips before. But there are way more than 272 of them. I just gotta find the time to write them all up! Anyway . . .

Tip #272: Just about every view in Scholar is available through RSS?

If you’re reading blogs, RSS probably isn’t a new concept to you. If you need an RSS refresher, though, check out this fun intro video called RSS in Plain English to get up to speed, and then peruse some of the other RSS resources bookmarked in Scholar. 

When you’re looking at any set of bookmarks in Scholar — like, say, the bookmarks of Greg Ritter or a search for all bookmarks tagged mashup — you’ll notice a funky little orange icon in the title bar of the view. It looks like this:

That’s the standard icon for an RSS feed. Yeah, orange is the standard color. Doesn’t really go well with that green background, does it? Makes me think of certain teams, when my loyalties lie elsewhere. Note to self: have the UI designer change the color from green to maroon.

What you see when you click on an RSS icon depends on what browser you’re using. If you’re using a contemporary browser, like Firefox 2, Safari 2, or Internet Explorer 7 you’ll see basically the same content, nicely formatted. If you’re using an older browser, you might just see the raw XML. In any event, the RSS feed is the content from that page formatted in a standard way that other websites or tools can deal with.

So why do you care? Because having Scholar views available as RSS feeds means that you can use the URL for that feed to include content from Scholar is lots of other places. Let’s look at a few examples.

I was recently invited to attend one of the education technology roundtables Education Secretary Spellings is holding across the country.  This one was in California where I reside, right in the heart of Silicon Valley, a stones throw from Google, Apple, Yahoo!, HP, Sun, etc.  It was refreshing to be part of a conversation designed to open the dialogue on education technology.

Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun, was promoting the new open source project he launched called Curikki.  He is fired up about technology and education.  Pat Suppes, the emeritus Stanford professor who has been instructing gifted students online in a rigorous assessment environment for years (EPGY), argued for increasingly sophisticated assessment models.

But what became clear in the course of the two-hour session is that the Secretary, who was accompanied by FCC Chairman Martin, is searching for what comes next for NCLB.

Do you know about Ask Dr. C?

Many of the client moderators (a.k.a. “the doctors”) who participate in Ask Dr. C describe it as a “community of clients helping clients.” It’s such a tremendously helpful resource that I try to tell everyone I can about it, because it just shouldn’t be a secret.

The next time you have a question about using any Blackboard solution—the Blackboard Learning System (including CE and Vista), the Blackboard Content System, the Blackboard Community System, the Blackboard Transaction System, the Blackboard Portfolio—or about e-Learning in general, I’d like to invite you to give Ask Dr. C a try.

So what is it?

The K-12 team at Blackboard is really excited about a new contest we just started – the True Blackboard Stories Video Contest. Everyday we HEAR about the innovative ways clients use Blackboard software. We’d really like to SEE some of your success stories.

There have been a wide variety of reports out recently indicating that American students are not getting what they need in schools and from society to become successful adults. One presented at a recent Capitol Hill briefing discussed how a lack of skills and preparedness is perceived by employers.