Products & Services

Tech & Learning Magazine, one of the leading resources for K-12 leaders, has included three Blackboard products in their list of the top 100 educational technology products of 2011! CourseSites and Edline’s LCMS were listed among the “Best Upgraded Products” and Blackboard Mobile Learn was included as one of the “Best New Products” of the year. These wins help solidify our company commitment to the K-12 space and showcase our diverse range of capabilities – from communication to instruction – that support the work teachers and districts are doing every day.

This blog was originally posted by Emily Wilson on The Mobile Garage blog. Over 1,100 schools around the world are utilizing a Blackboard Mobile Solution. Four-year private colleges, state universities, community college districts and K-12 districts are all finding that mobile is a necessity to reinforce their brand as well as attract and retain students. See why and how Jacksonville State University, St. Hilda’s School, South Orange County Community College District, Loyola Marymount University, University of Rochester, and Central Washington University all decided to go mobile with Blackboard. And, a blogger from TMCNet who previously used Blackboard Learn on campus writes about how she wishes she had been able to access her courses and campus resources from her mobile phone.

We recently launched the Blackboard Mobile Strategy Series comprising of three online interactive sessions to help institutions develop their own mobile strategy. The series offeres an overview of the current status of mobile usage amongst students and showcases the possibilities that mobile offers to enrich teaching, learning, and campus life. We tapped into resources from the Blackboard Mobile team and were also helped by Jake Gannon from the University of Liverpool.

St. Hilda’s School in Australia is embracing the mobile learning trend and saving immense printing and papers costs at the same time.  Their goal is to use 1,000,000 fewer pieces of paper this school year!  The school has just launched the very first Blackboard Mobile™ Central app in K-12.  In addition, St. Hilda’s 750 students are able to access all of their courses on their mobile devices.  Learn more about St. Hilda’s mobile story, and hear first-hand from two students about what they are now able to do on their iPad!

Originally posted on The Mobile Garage by Eric Denman, lead developer for Android and BlackBerry. Today we announced the availability of an “SDK” for integrating other Android applications with Blackboard Mobile Central. Ever since we released Android for Mobile Central last Fall, we’ve known that we wanted to allow third party developers to join our Android ecosystem.  Our focus is, and always will be, on creating tools that do the greatest good for the greatest number of our users. This means that specialized tools (discipline-specific assessment tools, regional utilities, integration with specific systems) aren’t something we’re likely to develop ourselves. Now, with the Android SDK for Mobile Central, schools can integrate those tools themselves. Rather than release a structured set of tools and APIs for building Mobile Central modules like for our SDK for iOS, the Android solution leaves the door completely open: if you want to integrate your existing Android app into Mobile Central, you can, with very little effort.  Our build scripts will automatically detect the entry point, logo, and title of the module, and add it to the springboard automatically. At some point, we may release a shared library to encourage consistency of UI with the rest of Android Mobile Central, but for now we just wanted to open the door and see what solutions come out of our talented developer pool. Existing clients: if you want to get started integrating SDK modules into your Android Mobile Central app, you can submit a ticket to your Client Implementation Manager.