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Hey dreamers—you can’t read the Blackboard unless you show up for class.

This year, Blackboard kicked off what has rapidly become a successful series of regional one-day conferences designed to give our clients in-person access to Blackboard leaders and developers and insights into your peers’ technology endeavors. In other words, class is coming to you.

What: Blackboard Teaching and Learning Day

When: Wednesday December 5, 8:30 am (breakfast) to 4:15 pm

Where: Covel Commons Conference Center (UCLA), 330 De Neve Drive, Los Angeles

Why: To exchange ideas and best practices from Blackboard reps, your peers, and special guest speakers.

Guest Blog Post from Joe DiPietro, Instructional Designer at George Mason University. Joe shares his the story of an unforgettable teachable moment that he had experienced in a peer-to-peer setting.

A growing program at my university was seeking options to best support scaling and growth. The greatest concerns for key stakeholders and policymakers was that any selected option must provide equivalent educational experiences and academic rigor while concomitantly maintaining the same overall quality of instruction as the face-to-face courses generating the initial buzz.

We all make decisions based on factual information.  We get factual information from research and data.  And when it comes to data on education technology, the numbers say a lot about the growing demand for technology in the classroom.

Recently, Blackboard partnered with Project Tomorrow to delve deeper into demands for online education.  The findings? More than two thirds of administrators and almost half of students in grades 6-12 (45 percent) and their parents (46 percent) voiced support for requiring high school students to take an online class in order to graduate.  And there’s more:

• 84 percent of principals who endorse devices in the classroom believe they increase student engagement in learning
• 87 percent of parents say that the effective implementation of technology within instruction is important to their child’s success (50 percent label it as “extremely important”).

Just because something is getting a sudden burst of attention, does not mean it’s a passing fad. And that’s what we’ve tried to prove about social learning over the past few weeks. (Ex: Myth 1 – Social learning isn’t new!)

So, what gives social learning this broad appeal and staying power? Multiple studies and stories confirm students’ increased immersion in technology gives them the experiences, relationships, and stimulation that helps them stay better engaged in their learning experience, plus these technologies are something they are increasingly unable to live without.

Social learning is not going away, and in fact, it will continue to be bolstered by technology and students’ adoption of it.

Our fourth and final myth busted here: Social Learning Doesn’t Have Broad Appeal

Playgrounds and roller coasters are just for fun. Social Learning is fun too, but it serves multiple educational purposes and has tangible benefits for both the students and the institutions involved. In today’s classrooms, the idea of social learning is taking hold in a variety of ways. Educators are seeing that social learning may include external elements that could be regarded as ‘just for fun,’ like Facebook, Twitter and blogging, but that really these are beneficial to the learning experience.  Experiencing it firsthand demonstrates how the interconnected, interactive nature of social learning amplifies the rate at which content can be shared and digested.

Take a look and see how social learning plays a significant role in the serious endeavor of educating today’s students for Duke University professor, Cathy Davidson.  Are her techniques just ‘fun’ or important enhancements to the educational experience?

We’re myth-busting. Click here to read on: Social Learning Is Just for Fun