Products & Services

Get to know the Blackboard Learn Experts in preparation for New Orleans.

BbWorld is so jam-packed full of great sessions, discussions, and fun times that it helps to plan ahead a little bit.  The Learn team and I thought it would be fun to give you a roster of ‘who’s who’ on the team so that you can locate the right people for your needs at BbWorld. Many of these product experts will be doing cool product demos and min-sessions of favorite workflows in Blackboard Learn (even some future functionality). They will be available at the Blackboard Learn booth for discussions about software or to discuss the Amazon, VW Vans, and how King Edward II lost his wife! Let’s not delay – meet the experts who can give you answers to the questions you have about Blackboard Learn.  (In order to not overwhelm you, there will be additional experts introduced in follow up posts – stay tuned)

Time and resources are growing scarce in K-12 education. Many successful programs are losing budget money and are not getting it back (see these stories about schools in Chicago, Fort Worth, and Las Vegas). These stories are disappointing for teachers, students and families; however, the commonality that unites each article is adaptability. Educators, students, and parents are adapting to their circumstances, no matter how abysmal. How do we keep teachers in their jobs, cut costs of individualized education, and promote student success? Blackboard has partnered with Learning.com in order to provide free (and fee-based) education resources to make students more successful without breaking the bank for school districts. A great lesson should be focused on the student. The teacher should have time to teach the class and help with individual students’ needs. We want to focus on student success rather than the amount it will cost. With the new Learning.com content portal building block in Blackboard, educators will be able to teach students by using quality lesson plans from premier providers (NASA, Smithsonian, USA Today…) as well as other educators. Learning.com is happy to share their vast catalog of quality resources in K-12 education with Blackboard Learn. These sources are accessible and easily implemented into Blackboard course plans. What is the point of reinventing the wheel if there are already great educational resources out there? But the 200,000+ resources aren’t even the best part of the Learning.com building block. The most helpful aspects of the partnership are easy organization, implementation of Learning.com content into course tools, and catered lesson plans for the active learner. Teachers will be able to easily organize numerous lesson plans and information while accommodating the technological needs of students born in the millennial generation. Some of the features that cater to the active learner include online quizzes, multimedia, and textbook content. Educators will also be able to effortlessly track student progress.  Find out more about how our partnership with Learning.com will help students engage in their coursework and give K-12 teachers quality resources for the classroom.

Thousands of faculty, instructional designers and system administrators demonstrate their Blackboard Learn expertise every day, but only one can be named the winner of BbWorld 2012 Jeopardy (Blackboard Learn edition). Say What?? That’s right! This year, we’re hosting a live version of Jeopardy at BbWorld (think lots of Blackboard Learn questions and answers sans Alex Trebek…although we may have a pretty decent look-a-like) on Tuesday, July 10^th from 6:30 – 6:40PM, and we’re looking for 3 contestants to compete in it and show off their Blackboard Learn expertise. The first place winner of Jeopardy will walk away with a brand new spankin’ iPad! Here’s How You Become a BbWorld 2012 Jeopardy Contestant

1. The first step is easy! Simply submit this form and enter to become a BbWorld 2012 Jeopardy contestant.
2. Next, decide whether you want to record and upload a video to YouTube and tell us in 1 minute or less “Why You’re a Blackboard Learn Expert” OR upload an image that visually depicts “Why You’re a Blackboard Learn Expert” to your Facebook page.
3. Then you’ll want to tweet about the contest and why you believe you’re a Blackboard Learn expert to @Blackboard using the BbWorld 2012 hash tag- #BbW12. Email community@blackboard.com to confirm your entry was received.

There’s no doubt that the growth of digital learning content is accelerating.  Multiple resources indicate that a higher ed world of blended and online learning is rapidly approaching, some resources even cite the “flip to digital” occurring in the next 5 years.  Textbooks aren’t going away any time soon but their use in the classroom is declining steadily.  And, expectations are that instructors will graduate from eTexts to the more sophisticated integrated learning systems being developed by publishers.

What does this mean for you?

Blackboard can be a channel for all this content and tools, helping faculty make sense of the numerous digital content options available to them.  Blackboard offers a broad choice of content to choose from right within the Blackboard Learn course.  I would like to take a moment to look at one of our newest providers of digital content: Cengage Learning.

For the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of supporting the Blackboard User Group (or BUG) program and assisting a number of User Group Leaders to launch or support their groups. So I can confidently say that if you’re not an active member of a Blackboard User Group – unlike the more than 1600 of your peers that are – you’re missing out on a great opportunity to positively impact teaching and learning at your institution. So, what’s so special about Blackboard User Groups? They’re client-run groups that give you- its members- the opportunity to network, stay up to date on the latest trends and information, collectively give feedback to Blackboard management, engage with subject matter experts and share best practices with a community of peers. More importantly, it’s this new community of peers – dare I even say friends – that are leveraging technologies as you and have faced similar challenges or decisions, peers that you can now turn to for advice and ideas to help you successfully advance your institution’s e-learning programs.