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It’s hard to believe – but summer is winding down! Still planning how you’ll go active in your classroom? Laying the groundwork for a great new year is important for any age group – but keeping active learners engaged after a summer outside the classroom can be a challenge. Activities that emphasize social learning and other engaging tactics can help keep things moving. Just in case you need some help- here are some lesson plan ideas for digital natives to get you started this fall:

1. Make Your Own Lesson Plan. Easing students back into the classroom groove is always a challenge – why not start the year off by showing them that their education is in their hands? Ask them to make a lesson plan that would help show their peers what they learned over the summer. Showing the active learner that you know that their education doesn’t end in the classroom is a great way to encourage them to continue learning from life.
2. Focused Small Group Discussion. Since active learners have the world at their fingertips they often have a lot to say about a lot of topics. Break your students into small groups when discussing a topic that is content rich and ask them to brain storm together to identify key points. Encourage them to work together while using mobile devices to provide some supporting material – a perfect way to integrate mobility into the learning framework.

On 22 June 2012, the Society for Pedagogy and Information (GPI) – a scientific society for multimedia, educational technology and media didactics – awarded the Comenius EduMedia Awards to outstanding products in the field of ICT-supported educational media. Blackboard Mobile Learn was awarded the Comenius EduMedia Seal of Approval and the Comenius EduMedia Medal in the category ‘Educational Management Systems (LMS)’.

The Blackboard Mobile™ Learn application gives students and faculty access to their courses, content, and organizations on a variety of mobile devices including Android™, BlackBerry® and iPhone OS. Students and instructors can access documents in multiple formats, read announcements, create discussion threads, upload media, create content items within the course map, comment on blogs and more—all on the mobile devices they love. This German trailer demonstrates what Blackboard Mobile Learn looks like on the iPad.

Anyone who has ever sat in a classroom is familiar with the quiet student who sits in the back and rarely speaks up.   Depending on the class, I probably fit that profile at times.  Introverts, or those who tend to shy away from classroom interaction, can pose a unique challenge for educators trying to build a more interactive classroom.   As our curricula shift to embrace an active learning philosophy, how can we best accommodate the introvert? While we might not see any studies on the impact of technology on the life of the introverted student any time soon – there are characteristics inherent to these quiet learners that can be leveraged through technology.

Picture this: a group of students sitting in a classroom with mobile devices in their hands and a teacher overseeing them with a similar mobile device in their hands. What are your first thoughts about the teacher overseeing their activities? If your initial impression of this situation isn’t positive – you aren’t alone. The movement from the wholesale banning of mobile devices and technology in the classroom to their adoption as best practice in the classroom is happening fast and is still new enough that misconceptions linger. Whether it is embodied in the prevalent fear that mobile media encourages distraction or just a suspicion that it’s a way for teachers to shirk off their responsibilities – the shift to a pro-mobile learning mindset is far from complete.

This week Blackboard interviewed Melissa Stange, a BbWorld 2012 VIP blogger. To say that Melissa wears a few hats would be an understatement. In her day job, Melissa is the Title System Administrator at Shenandoah University where she runs all Blackboard products. In addition, she is working on her PhD in Information Systems Management from Walden University and teaches at Lord Fairfax Community College in the evenings. Melissa told us she saw the blog contest as an opportunity to challenge herself and take on blogging. She tells her students to blog, and now she knows more about the process. Her blog covers information on BbWorld in addition to must-know cultural knowledge about NOLA. You wouldn’t want to travel down south and forget to eat the official doughnut of Louisiana, would you? Or not know how to pronounce it for that matter (Beignet= Ben YAY). Check out the specifics from the interview below: Bb: How long have you worked at Shenandoah University? MS: I have been at SU since May 2009, but I have been teaching on Blackboard since 2004. Bb: Have you been to BbWorld before? How would you describe your experience?