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Today is National Child Health Day, a time to build awareness and encourage people across America to work together in preventing problems and improving childhood health. It’s also a timely reminder to those who care for children to take the necessary precautions in preventing serious illnesses.  Flu season is around the corner, and as last year’s H1N1 outbreak demonstrated, it’s important to be vigilant. Additionally, the whooping cough outbreak in California has become so severe that it was recently declared an epidemic. As reported cases spread across the California border, the importance of childhood and routine vaccinations is great.

In our third installment of the Blackboard Connect™ social media integration feature spotlight, we look at Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD, a large K-12 school district outside of Dallas. TX, to examine their social media practices in conjunction with Blackboard Connect. 

As the Assistant Director of Public Information for the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District, Angela Shelley is not shy about using every available communication mode and device for getting the word out. But as digital communication channels gain more prominence, streamlined messages and outreach grows increasingly important, and in some respects, necessary for school districts.

Situated on the border of Dallas, Carrollton-Farmers Branch spans across six cities and is comprised of more than 25,000 students. Described as majority -minority, the district’s population largely consists of native speaking Spanish and Asian students, with most students speaking English as a second language. Such a large, diverse population requires flexible, robust communication from the school and district officials.

September is National Preparedness Month, and it serves as a timely reminder of the importance of taking precautionary measures before an urgent situation arises. For most people, proper preparedness simply means developing a well thought-out plan or stockpiling supplies. But for those in a position of leadership, whether it is a local community, school district or college campus, a robust communication plan and a reliable mass notification system are a must.

If your community already utilizes a notification service, National Preparedness Month is the perfect opportunity to remind residents to register or update their contact information in the notification database. With more contacts, and more accurate numbers and addresses, messages are more effective as official information can be received as soon as it’s available. An annual test call or an announcement to local media outlets are also great ways to generate awareness and encourage registration among residents.

Greetings from Australasia!

We’re here in Cairns, Queensland for this year’s BbSummit 2010. To spice things up, Blackboard Connect™ and Blackboard Mobile™ have teamed up to deliver a number of useful, informative sessions for this year’s participants. As both platforms work to provide students more mobility, it seems to be a natural pairing to demonstrate and share ways educators can better engage students through the combined use of our mobile content management and rapid communication systems.

Over the past two years Blackboard has been working closely with partners like the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and Deque Systems to achieve significant improvements in the accessibility of our products. We pledged to achieve the NFB’s certification for Non-Visual Access and in March of 2010 we were presented with their Gold Level Certification and became the only learning management system certified by the NFB.   

In July I had the opportunity to attend the NFB’s annual meeting with our VP of Corporate Strategy, Lara Oerter. Lara was speaking to the attendees about Blackboard and our partnership with NFB representatives like Anne Taylor and Clara Van Gerven. One of the themes of this year’s meeting was the power of education and equal access to information. The announcement of the certification of Blackboard Learn was met with much excitement.