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Ray Henderson (@readmeray) is back at the keys, with an update to his earlier “Grading Ourselves” post and another one on the importance of asynchronous learning tools.  

Hello, world. I’m back to keys after a hiatus of several weeks. Your encouragement to me to keep up my reporting whilst performing my other duties has been heard, and I’ve got a backlog to share (if you missed Joshua Kim’s encouragement it makes for interesting reading on Inside Higher Ed (http://tinyurl.com/blogmoreray). 

More to come from Ray on other fronts.  Stay tuned.

Don’t forget to follow Ray on Twitter – @readmeray. And to keep up with the latest from Blackboard, follow us at @Blackboard.

Hi, I’m Patrick Ryan. As the Technology Analyst in Blackboard Product Development I am responsible for maintaining our technology policy. Our technology stack includes everything from browsers to databases to internal components. Keeping Blackboard current with the changing technology landscape is my priority. I work to keep clients in the loop about our policies, levels of support, future intentions, and current supported technologies. I am part of a Product Development team that works hard year round to keep up with the latest versions of operating systems and browsers so that you, the user, can have a seamless experience from release to release.

Karl Engkvist, senior vice president for strategy and operations in Blackboard’s International group, reports from the United Arab Emirates:

This week in Dubai, I attend Blackboard’s second summit: BbSummit Middle East ’07.

(The first summit, BbSummit Asia ’07, occurred last spring in Singapore.)

The 150 summit attendees in Dubai gathered for a variety of education technology presentations and, as importantly, networked with peers (the original definition of social networking, that is).  Many people found the networking opportunities during the summit to be as valuable as the official program.

A highlight of the summit was remarks offered by His Excellency Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak al Nahayan, which opened the event.  He strongly endorsed the modernization of the UAE university infrastructure, with a particular commitment to education technology.  As Minister of Education and Scientific Research for the UAE, his words carried particular meaning and inspired summit attendees to redouble our efforts to educate, and create and support innovations in e-Learning.

The tweeting started just before BbWorld’07. John Lowe posted to the BLKBRD-L listserv about using twitter for the BbWorld’07 Unofficial Backchannel. I was intrigued.

I’d read about twitter – the website that asks you to answer the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. Despite the press it was getting I couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. Who really needs to tell people what they are doing at random moments during the day. Furthermore, who wants to read that random stream of stuff? I thought.

Now was my chance to find out. I signed up. Throughout BbWorld’07 I tried to remember to post interesting tidbits or URLs that I’d heard in sessions. When I did I heard back from others in the network who were enjoying other sessions or who were stuck at home unable to attend the conference and glad to hear about the events in near real time. People seemed to appreciate this micro-blogging of the conference. Before I knew it I was addicted to tweeting.

Now I’m using twitter to share what I’m doing in my role at Blackboard. If it is related to the Blackboard Developer Network, or news in the Open Source communities, or updates to the User Group and other Client Engagement activities and I think others might want to know, I tweet about it.

Interested in learning more? You are welcome to follow me.

The Second Life Community Convention opens this weekend in Chicago (August 24–26), with an Education Track of sessions and posters with topics dedicated specifically to educators, such as teaching a class or building a campus in-world.

The conference is sold out.  My fellow Blackboard blogger Adrian Alleyne will be attending.  Those of us without conference registration can attend virtually, however, by visiting one of the in-world locations that will be streaming events.

If you’ll be attending in person or in-world, I’d like to hear about the experience: please let me know at blogfeedback@blackboard.com.