Uncategorized

Hello, It’s

Melissa Chotiner

. Last week I had a chance to sit down and chat with

Joel Backon

, the director of information technology services and history teacher at Choate, one of a small number of independent boarding schools in the

U.S.

 

Joel has been in this position for 14 years and mentioned that starting next year, he’ll be switching roles to focus on instructional technology (and teaching history). It was interesting that he sort of mentioned this in passing and towards the end of our meeting. As if it is not that big of a deal – but to me – it seems like a huge deal. Why? Because all technology is not the same – and this is something I think we are starting to recognize and appreciate in education.

Hello, Melissa Chotiner here.

The Educate Innovate blog has been getting great feedback and we always invite you to send your comments and questions to blogfeedback@blackboard.com.  Brain Baute at

Elon University recently wrote to comment on our article about using Blackboard for Online Student Elections and his experience with online voting. 

"… we considered using Blackboard for our student elections a few years ago.  We ended up building our own online voting system because Blackboard couldn’t handle one type of election we have, which requires students to vote for up to 5 candidates from a pool of 10 candidates.  Other than that limitation it would have been a great solution.  And I’d love to hear how other schools are using Blackboard for voting and in other creative ways."

I’m  happy to post your ideas and feedback – please send them in.

  Hello – This is Melissa Chotiner, one of the behind-the-scenes blog team members at Blackboard – by day I’m the PR Manager. I’m writing to share some information I picked up on the show floor of Bb World this year.

While manning the Bb World “Connect with Blackboard” booth (a meeting place where clients can share their stories of innovation with Blackboard and learn about Blackboard Connections and the Blackboard Idea Exchange) on the exhibit floor, I had a chance to catch up with John McFadden, the CIO from Loyola College in Maryland.

John was telling me about what he thought was the “Tipping Point” for use of Blackboard technology solutions at Loyola. (Malcolm Gladwell had delivered the keynote address at the conference that morning). Online student elections, when students started using Blackboard software to hold their student elections – that was what he considered the Tipping Point.

The more I dig into the concept, history and evolution of copyright, the more fascinating I find the topic (and the more confusing it sometimes gets).  It doesn’t help that the body of law surrounding copyright and interpretations by the courts on copyright is always changing.  One thing is clear — the digital world is changing the way we as consumers of digital content can access, store and use it. 

Recently Greg Ritter pointed me to an excellent presentation on copyright history and evolution by Lawrence Lessig that he delivered at the 2002 O’Reilly Open Source Convention – yes it is a recording from 2002 but it is still current in its content.  I recommend watching this presentation because:

It’s official. Blackboard and WebCT are one as of today — ahead of the previously announced schedule, I might add. From the press release:

The combination of Blackboard and WebCT establishes one of the most innovative global software companies serving the education industry. Currently, more than 3,700 world-wide higher education, K-12, corporate, government and commercial academic institutions enhance their learning environments with solutions offered by the two organizations. The transaction brings together two of the industry’s premier software brands and most widely used technologies for creating, managing and delivering course content and materials online.

Welcome to all our new colleagues joining from WebCT! It’s an exciting time!