Products & Services

As you may have seen here and here, we’ve been teasing you about June 7, 2012 being your lucky day. If you’re following our social channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slideshare, and Flickr) or reading this blog post you’re one click closer. Starting today – June 7 at 10am ET through June 8, 8:30pm ET – you get one more chance to register for BbWorld at a reduced rate. We’re calling it Lucky 7. We’ve lowered the registration rate to $777 (and $477 for K-12 folks) for 48 hours only. To get lucky with this rate, copy this promo code BW2012777 (or BW2012477) and click on over to the registration page to activate. You may be wondering why you should follow us on social media to get discount info. Well, social media and access to others through technology is growing. It is fast, convenient, and it allows for everyone to stay connected and become informed. Which brings me to my next point about social learning. The main idea of social learning is collaboration between parties. In order to learn more, you need to communicate more… and BbWorld is the best opportunity of the year to do that!

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?

The German eLearning Journal put the Blackboard Learn platform to the test for their May edition. The magazine regularly tests various eLearning products in a number of categories, ranging from online solutions and video training to language training, online collaboration and learning management systems. Blackboard Learn 9.1 SP8 was thoroughly reviewed by a team of experts on 26 categories.  The experts awarded the platform great scores and the end verdict “Very Good”. In the report, the eLearning Journal states that: “One must attest that Blackboard Learn quite simply has, in all respects, what a modern LMS must have. The technical features such as scalability and adaptability achieved the same outstanding ratings as the administration did.” On flexibility and openness, the reviewers mention that “Blackboard doesn’t rely solely on its own standards; rather, it is so flexible, that, like a Lego brick, it can be integrated into a number of other systems and existing solutions.” Interested to learn more about this review? Click here to download the English version of the report and click here to download the German version of the report.